Amid a growing consensus that passwords are not adequately secure, the group of tech companies working to supplant them with something stronger has gained a significant new ally. The FIDO Alliance said today that Google, which has shown a strong interest lately in making user authentication more secure, has joined its board of directors.

FIDO is developing alternative methods to verify a user's identity when they try to log into websites and services, with a spaghetti-against-the-wall approach that includes biometrics, voice and facial recognition, USB security tokens, NFC, and one-time passwords. The goal is to create a standards-based specification for password alternatives that work with Internet services and with one another.

G...

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Microsoft is preparing to revive the traditional Start button it killed with Windows 8. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans have revealed to The Verge that Windows 8.1 will include the return of the Start button. We understand that the button will act as a method to simply access the Start Screen, and will not include the traditional Start Menu. The button is said to look near-identical to the existing Windows flag used in the Charm bar.

Microsoft changes its mind

Microsoft's change of heart follows another recent planned change for Windows 8.1: a boot to desktop option. We understand Microsoft will add an option to allow users to boot directly to the traditional desktop environment in future builds of the upcoming Windows 8...

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Pocket's "Send to Friend" Shares Articles Between Pocket Users

Pocket is one of our favorite ways to bookmarking and read things later, and today it updated with a fun new feature: Now, you can send articles straight to your other friends that are using Pocket. No email, Facebook, or other networks necessary.

Pocket's given its Share menu a complete overhaul, but the coolest feature is the ability to send articles directly to your other friends using Pocket. Instead of emailing them the article, you can send it right to their new Pocket Inbox, so they can add it to their reading list with one tap (and vice-versa).

Of course, if your friends use other read-later services, there are other ways to send articles directly to their reading list. Hit the link below to read more about Pocket's new feature.

Introducing Pocket’s Send to Friend: Share with the People Who Matter Most

Google has added a new way to control what happens to your account when you stop using it — most likely because you're no longer around. A new Inactive Account Manager, available in Google's settings, allows you to set a timeout period for your account. If you go three months to a year without signing in, Google will first notify a selected phone number or alternate email address. After that, it will let you add up to ten contacts, who will be notified with a custom-written email and optionally given access to data from any or all Google services. As a last step, Google can also delete your account once any contacts have been notified.

In a blog post, Google detailed how to plan for your "digital afterlife." It's not the first company...

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After months of speculation, Samsung has finally revealed its latest oversized smartphones, the Galaxy Mega 5.8 and 6.3. Larger than even Samsung's enormous 5.5-inch Galaxy Note 2, both phones are low- to mid-range in terms of specifications. The larger Galaxy Mega has a 6.3-inch 720p display, LTE connectivity, 8GB or 16GB of storage, and a 1.7GHz dual-core processor, while the 5.8-inch model has a qHD display, HSPA connectivity, 8GB of storage, and a 1.4GHz dual-core processor. Both have IR blasters for controlling televisions, an 8-megapixel camera, 1.5GB of RAM, a microSD slot, and are running the latest version of Android, 4.2 Jelly Bean.

Pricing for the models isn't clear, but from the specifications we expect them to be cheaper...

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Now that the Oculus Rift developers kits are finally shipping out, the teardown team at iFixit have gotten their hands on one and reduced it to its bare components. Despite the rather bulky size of the dev kit, it turns out there isn't much in there — as we've heard before, there's a single 7-inch LCD with a resolution of 1280 x 800. That works out to a 640 x 800 resolution for each eye, something we're hoping to see improve down the line to alleviate the blurriness we've experienced when using the Rift. There's very little else going on inside these ski goggles — a small motherboard holds an ARM processor and the motion-tracking gyroscope and accelerometer sensors necessary for the Rift to pull you into its world. While we know this...

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It takes 13 minutes and seven seconds to complete Snake, the decades-old game that enjoyed a renascence through Nokia's early mobile phones. 13 minutes, seven seconds, one hundred pellets. But what is this endless pursuit of pellets for? What reward lies at the end of this snake's insatiable desire for food? Nothing. Victory in life only results in death. Immortalized in a two-minute GIF, this foreboding tale of how reptilian consumerism breeds nihilism is a mesmerizing journey of birth, life, and death.

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On April 12th, the much-vaunted Facebook Phone will arrive — but it's not a phone at all. Facebook Home, as it's called, is a couple of pieces of software that transform any Android smartphone’s homescreen into a Facebook feed, and put Facebook Messenger chats on top of any app. Instead of making a sucker's bet that it can take on Apple and Samsung directly, Facebook is doing what Facebook does best: making software.

It's a clever strategy, but it will only work if the software is actually compelling enough for people to want to install and use it. Facebook needs to convince a wide swath of users who never gave their homescreens a second thought that it has a better way. Even if it can't, Facebook is hedging its bets with another...

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The HTC First is going to be best-known as the pilot "Facebook Phone," shipping with the all-new Facebook Home software running in lieu of a traditional Android phone skin. That would be enough to make it notable, but the First has a couple of other things going for it, things that lots of people have been waiting for in an Android phone. First (and before we go any further, let's just put it on the table that "First" is a ridiculous name), HTC is finally zigging into a smaller screen size while the rest of the Android ecosystem is zagging into ever larger form factors. Second, beneath that Facebook launcher lurks a pure version of Android that's virtually unadulterated by manufacturer and carrier software.

A year ago, a phone debuting...

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Alienware (a Dell Inc. subsidiary) begins offering its first Ubuntu-powered PC targeted at gamers.

Image from alienware.com

The Alienware x51 series is a standalone PC tower which you would attach to your own TV and peripherals and starts at $599 (ranging up to $1049, with “build yours” options).

Ubuntu on Alienware

Regarding Ubuntu, Alienware describes it’s “simple and stylish” nature, and highlights that it’s “fast and secure” and offers “free applications and storage”, not to mention explaining (to newcomers, presumably) the plethora of Ubuntu default applications.

Alienware also plugs Steam for Linux as the gaming platform on this PC, noting the rapidly expanding Linux game library that Steam provides.

Video Hardware

Arguably the most important element for gaming is the graphics card and the X51 systems offer NVIDIA hardware. Of course, under Ubuntu you would have NVIDIA’s supported drivers out-of-the-box, so you would be able to game right away. Having said that, it probably would be ideal to keep tabs on updates for the drivers regularly.

More info

You can check out the Alienware website for more info on the x51 series, such as the range of hardware specifications and availability.

Alienware X51 with Ubuntu 

Alienware Joins the Ubuntu OEM Family OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

Answering questions after today's Facebook Home event, Mark Zuckerberg was full of praise for Google's smartphone platform. "We think that Google takes their commitment to openness in the ecosystem really seriously," he said, regarding the possibility Google might try to lock out Facebook. Google, he said, was aware of Facebook's work, although wasn't a partner like a host of other industry players. "I actually think this is really good for Android," he added, setting up a gentle dig. "Most app developers put most of their energy into iPhone."

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg confirmed that Facebook Home is essentially an end-run around Google's services wherever they compete directly with Facebook's, with the ultimate goal of capturing more...

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Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo may no longer be the only names that matter in gaming, but the "big three" is still very much alive in people's minds. Even as iOS and Android have gotten better games, and better hardware to run those games, capital-G Gaming remains something done with a controller and a console, and something we do on our big-screen TV.

Maybe that's why Ouya struck such a chord when it hit Kickstarter last July. Basically, the company described a $99 box that would take the many great Android games off of your 4-inch phone and put them onto your TV. Ouya shattered its Kickstarter goal (and a few records for the platform) en route to 63,000-plus backers and more than $8.5 million in funding for the Ouya, and now nine...

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Los Angeles is well known as a city plagued by gridlock, but a new traffic control strategy three decades in the making could help to ease the pain. That's the goal of the Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control system, which was completed in February and synchronizes all 4,500 traffic signals across the metropolis. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told the New York Times that LA is "the first big city in the world" to run all its signals in sync, and said that the system would cut down on both drive times and pollution. "By synchronizing our traffic signals, we spend less time waiting, less time polluting."

The system dates back to preparations for the 1984 Olympics, when certain intersections surrounding the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum...

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Solar energy has a reputation as being a clean energy source but hasn't earned it — at least not up until now. That's because in a darkly ironic truth, the power used to manufacture solar panels still comes mainly from electricity generated by fossil fuels. But a new study from Stanford researchers says that the balance may be tipping: all the solar panels online around the world last year produced enough energy to make up for the energy it took to make them, researchers are able to say with more than 50 percent confidence.

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While some Dell investors have taken issue with CEO Michael Dell's proposed plan to take his company private, an SEC filing has revealed some compelling reasons for investors to think twice about protesting the move. As noted by Forbes, a filing dated March 29th includes a lengthy section where Dell outlines the "risks and uncertainties" related to continued ownership of the company's stock — it's essentially a laundry list of how the consumer tech market has changed and how hasn't quite managed to keep up.

Difficulties that Dell notes in its filing include:

• "...decreasing revenues in the market for desktop and notebook PCs and the significant uncertainties as to whether, or when, this decrease will end..."
• "...the overall...

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Zoom In and Out on Google Maps with This One-Handed Shortcut

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iOS/Android: You probably know you can pinch to zoom in and out on Google Maps, but there's another, less intuitive shortcut that's more suited for one hand use.

All you need to do is double tap on the screen, then drag your finger up or down. Google will zoom in and out on the map as if you were pinching, but it's much easier to pull off with only one hand. This works on iOS and Android. Check out the video above for a quick demo.

Google Maps One-Hand Zoom on iPhone | Carl Sednaoui via Hacker News

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Watch Lectures In Half The Time with YouTube’s HTML5 Player

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From college courses to TED talks, YouTube is a great source of educational lectures. The downside to this unique method of learning is the time it can take. If you need to cram a bunch of video into a short amount of time, Reddit user ladyzebra suggests switching to YouTube's HTML5 player and turning the playback speed up.

To enable this, you'll need to activate the HTML5 trial here. This version of the player supports turning up video playback to either 1.5x or 2x the normal pace. Depending on how slowly the speaker talks, you may be able to save up to half the time you'd normally spend watching the video. Most videos I found worked best at 1.5x speed, but there will always be that one person who talks impossibly slow that can benefit from the fastest option.

LPT: Watch YouTube lectures in half the time | Reddit

April Fools' Day provides the springboard for companies to make some unbelievable announcements, but for Google and Microsoft, it serves as the perfect time to poke fun at eachothers' shortcomings. With Gmail Blue, Google is teasing Redmond over a product that doesn't officially exist yet, while Microsoft goes back to basics to poke fun at its rival's "vanilla" search engine.

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YouTube has been making a big push into live streaming as a means of expanding the types of content it can offer users, and here at GDC the company has announced a new set of programming APIs to make the process even easier for game developers. The new APIs allow developers to send YouTube a live stream of video coming from a game, and YouTube will then transcode the video in real time, providing the appropriate version for various YouTube users. The company has offered similar features to some partners in the past — YouTube touted BlackOps 2 as a particularly popular example — but the new platform will expand the number of developers that can participate, as well as take the live video streams beyond just the desktop: they'll now be...

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Google just announced the Open Patent Non-Assertion (OPN) Pledge, a new initiative whereby the company has promised not to sue developers, distributors, and users of open source software utilizing Mountain View's patents "unless first attacked." In introducing the good faith effort, Google is reiterating its passion and support for all things open. "Open-source software has been at the root of many innovations in cloud computing, the mobile web, and the Internet generally," writes Duane Valz, Google's senior patent counsel. "We remain committed to an open Internet — one that protects real innovation and continues to deliver great products and services."

The company isn't throwing its entire patent portfolio up for grabs, however....

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The latest iteration of the popular GNOME desktop, version 3.8, sees release today – but what are notable changes and improvements should you be looking out for?

Here’s a list of our 10 favourite changes – in no specific order – new to this release.

10: App Launching Made Easier

Opening apps in GNOME Shell has always been easy to do, but tweaks to the Application Overlay in this latest release makes it even quicker still.

When viewing the Application Overlay you’ll now find two tabs at the bottom – ‘Frequent Apps’  and ‘All’.

‘Frequent’ groups your most used apps together in one page, meaning you don’t have to go search them out or remember to pin them to the launcher.

‘All’, meanwhile, shows all your installed apps, including new ‘groups’ of apps.

Frequently Used Apps Are Now Available More Frequently

9: New App Previews

3.8 brings two new application ‘previews’ to the desktop – a desktop weather app called ‘Weather’ (imagine that, eh!) and a new note-taking app called ‘Bijiben’.

Two New GNOME Apps Debut

8: Clocks App

‘Clocks’ is another new app on the GNOME desktop. Now stable and included as a default application in this latest release, Clocks allows you to add and preview world times, add alarms, and make use of a stopwatch and a timer.

Clocks – A New GNOME App

7: All The Tweaks

No run-down of notable new stuff would be complete without mention of the raft of minor but vital ‘papercut’ fixes that the GNOME team have been dutifully seeing to during this cycle.

Over 60 such bugs have been fixed, new animations introduced, and usability problems solved.

Subtle Updates That Make A Big Difference

6: Privacy Options

Privacy is a hot potato topic on the Linux desktop right now. Ubuntu has included a range of configurable Privacy settings in its last few releases, but it’s only with 3.8 that GNOME follows suit.

Options for adjusting what appears on the lock screen; what activity is tracked; and how long temporary files are kept around for can all be accessed behind the new Privacy tile in Settings.

Privacy Settings

5: Documents <3 Google

Google Docs Can Now Be Edited Directly from Documents

‘Documents’, the default document management app on the GNOME desktop, gains a number of interace tweaks this release – as well as some seriously cool Google Docs/Drive integration.

Documents can now:

• Open PDF files from Google Drive
• Edit Google Docs from within the app itself
• Share Documents via Google Docs

4: Web Changes

At Last – A ‘New Tab’ button in Web

Web, the default web-browser in GNOME, also gets a boat-load of updates. Including:

• ‘New Tab’ button added to toolbar
• Private-browsing mode
• Now Supports Adobe Flash
• Improved page search interface
• Undo tab close action

3: Improved Search

The Activities Overview has given its search results view a bit of an overhaul, with application-specific search results displayed.

Search Your Contacts, Apps, Files, and Documents from the Activities Overlay

You can fine tune the results that appear by tweaking the option inthe ‘Search’ settings pane in Settings (formally known as ‘System Settings’)

Don’t want ‘Documents’ appearing? Turn it off. Want files and folders to appear first? Move them to the top.

Adjust Search Settings to Suit Your Workflow

2. Classic Mode

Miss the ‘panel up, panel down’ desktop layout of old? GNOME 3.8 has you covered with their new Classic mode.

The best thing about Classic mode is that it’s wholesome GNOME. It’s not a fork but built with GNOME 3 technologies – so you’re don’t lose out on any of GNOME’s great features. Everything from the App Menus and the Message Center to the GNOME Shell activities overlay are included and accessible.

The New GNOME Classic Mode

1: Notifications

Accessing GNOME’s Messaging Tray is easier in this release thanks to the addition of two new keyboard shortcuts:

• Super+M - Opens and closes the message tray
• Super+N - Expands a notification when displayed

Furthermore, a new Notifications Settings pane allows you to choose which apps show notifications, what sort of notifications they show, and where. Handy stuff!

Viewing Notification Settings for Empathy

Top 10 Features in GNOME 3.8 OMG! Ubuntu! - Everything Ubuntu. Daily.

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