Maxim Bange

Puts Samsung's Galaxy S4 Zoom to shame

Live on stage at Nokia World 2013, WhatsApp CEO Jim Balsamic announced the instant messaging service now has 350 million monthly active users. That's up by 50 million since August, when the network announced it had hit 300 million. Balsamic also announced that some 250,000 users per day are registering for WhatsApp using Nokia devices — including Symbian, Asha and Lumia handsets — over 7 million per month.

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Google has announced a new suite of tools for activists and non-profits at their Ideas conference in New York today, including tools for evading web censorship and oppressive regimes. The biggest focus has been on DDoS attacks, a kind of brute-force action that can easily take down a small site without leaving any clues as to the culprits. DDoS has been a persistent problem for small-scale activists on the web, but Google's new Project Shield would aim to fix that, offering free DDoS mitigation services to sites serving "media, elections, and human rights related content."

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No longer a requirement for work, are neck ties going out of fashion?

When President Barack Obama met with Chinese President Xi Jinping this past summer, he showed up sans neckwear. This happened again at the G-8 summit this past June when the President, along with other world leaders, decided to go for the "no tie" look to create a more relaxed environment.

OK, maybe President Obama doesn't feel like wearing a tie every day. What's the big deal? John Ortved at The Wall Street Journal reports that regular tie-wearers have become a dwindling species and, as a result, business growth is stagnant for tie makers. Annual sales for ties have dropped from a record high of $1.3 billion in 1995 to $677.7 million in 2008, according to market research firm NPD Group.

Whether you blame it on the President, high-powered techies and their penchants for hoodies, or the death of formality in general, the tie business is definitely shrinking. But while executives may be dropping the tie in droves, it's ironically the young and hip — the group that has never been required to wear them — who seem to be keeping the tie business afloat (think Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon). 

Just like all accessories, the neck tie may be going through some changes, but it doesn't mean it's out of the picture. Ties seem to be getting skinnier and designers are experimenting with different fabrics, like crinkled cotton, linen, and even wool.

For those who want to try out the trendy tie look, Tie Society is a company that sends subscribers three ties to wear at a time. When you're ready for a new look, you send back the ties and get three more.

Interestingly, as the traditional tie dwindles in popularity, the bow tie seems to be gaining steam. Bloomberg's Tom Keene, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, rapper Kanye West, and South Korean singer Psy are all big bow tie fans. 

Indeed, Jeff Blee, a divisional merchandise manager at Brooks Brothers, says bow ties sales were up 60% in 2012 compared to the previous year.

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Involves more work but should be safer

There is seemingly no end to the number of things you can do in Minecraft — and the latest thing is experimenting with quantum physics. A new mod called qCraft, built by none other than Google's Quantum A.I. Lab Team, adds blocks that exhibit quantum entanglement, superposition, and observer-dependency properties. Some of the new blocks can be "activated" simply by looking at them, while others are prone to disappear at any moment.

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The Canada-based search engine isoHunt is not just one of the oldest but also one of the largest torrent repositories on the Internet.

At the time of writing isoHunt consists of 13,773,786 torrents linking to 286 million files which are good for a total 17,390.44 terabytes of data. Unfortunately, all of the site’s metadata may soon disappear.

After a legal battle of nearly eight years isoHunt founder Gary Fung announced the site’s closure this week. Fung signed a $110 million settlement with the MPAA and agreed to shut down the torrent site by October 23.

While isoHunt.com will soon be gone, the site’s torrents and other metadata will be preserved if it’s up to the ArchiveTeam. In an attempt to save isoHunt’s extensive collection of torrent files, a group of “rogue archivists” has been working around the clock to save all data for future generations.

TorrentFreak talked to several ArchiveTeam members, each determined to prevent one of the largest metadata massacres in history.

“The settlement took everyone by surprise, and appeared to come out of nowhere. IsoHunt is shutting down in less than three days, and the speedy massacre of such a significant volume of metadata is a tragedy,” ArchiveTeam’s ‘lysobit’ informs TorrentFreak.

“This project isn’t about politics or copyright issues. This is about preserving culture and historical metadata. All data is essential,” he adds.

The ArchiveTeam gathered fame in 2010 when they released a full backup of all Geocities websites before Yahoo! pulled the plug for good. The archive was released as a 641 gigabyte torrent and made headlines all over the Internet.

The backup of isoHunt, which is still in progress, is expected to be nearly five times larger. The ArchiveTeam believes that all torrents, comments and other metadata will be around three terabytes when its complete.

At this point it is still uncertain whether they will be able to finish the project in time. IsoHunt is expected to disappear in a few days and the ArchiveTeam is still looking for volunteers to assist in the backup process.

“People who are interested in supporting our effort of preserving the data contained on isoHunt can do so by following the instructions on GitHub for their platform. The script works by downloading metadata in bulks of 50 and uploading a compressed archive of them to a central server via the ‘Warrior’,” ArchiveTeam’s ‘Fionn’ told us.

According to ‘joepie91′, founder of the isoHunt archiving project, the rescue operation is a prime example of what the ArchiveTeam is for. The people involved in the team’s projects want to make sure that important data doesn’t get lost whenever a site shuts down.

“Many sites shut down over time – either outside of their own control, or due to an acquisition – and most of these sites don’t really care about their users, or the content they host. ArchiveTeam is a loosely organized group of ‘rogue archivists’ that keeps track of impending shutdowns, and saves all data that can be saved before it’s gone forever,” joepie91 told TorrentFreak.

“While there is some coherence, and some services are controlled by a smaller group of people, the general idea is to ‘just go get it done’. ArchiveTeam has developed a reusable toolkit for developing archiving scripts compatible with the ‘Warrior’; a system that anyone who runs the script can join to receive automated archiving tasks, making the whole process distributed and quicker,” he adds.

If the ArchiveTeam is able to get the backup done in time, isoHunt will write history again when the torrent becomes available. As far as we know, a three terabyte isoHunt archive is going to set a record for the largest torrent ever distributed in public.

Update: isoHunt has taken down its servers to prevent the site from being backed up. We hope to have more information on the current status of the backup later.

Source: ArchiveTeam Works Hard to Avert isoHunt Data Massacre

It's a Tuesday and Tom Clancy is dead.

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Facebook is finally landed on Windows 8 platform, which is especially joyous for Windows RT users. Microsoft has promised the official Facebook app for Windows 8 during the Microsoft Build [...]

The post Official Facebook App for Windows 8 Free Download appeared first on My Digital Life.

A fine example of RT imitating life

Basic setup will become more complex in time for better connectivity

You may never experience an Australian brush fire firsthand, but the video above gives you a good idea of what it’s like.

The clip, uploaded by the Mt. Victoria Rural Fire Brigade, was taken last week and shows just how scary being in the middle of brush fire can be.

It also reminds me of a really smart line from a recent profile on GoPro and how the camera company has managed to thrive even as the wider consumer camera market has contracted: “GoPro is for proactive moments. [...] A smartphone is for reactive, incidental captures.”

In other words, when people strap on something like GoPro, they have a pretty good idea they’re about to do something amazing.

GoPro may not have use cases like this one in mind when it designs its cameras, but it’s these unexpected use cases that have quickly become its devices’ hallmark.

Our week through the lens:
14-18 October 2013

Today's smartphones and apps can give real-time transportation advice, locate you anywhere in the world, act as your boarding pass, book your dinner reservation, translate languages, and even help you find a cheap, last-minute hotel room. 

That means that phone apps have become one of the best ways to target one of the most valuable consumer segments out there: air travelers. Recent research on mobile travelers has discovered particularities about their demographics and habits that make them quite desirable to brands and advertisers. For example, business travelers are more likely to actually book their travel on mobile (32% do so now), and consumers who use their mobile devices for travel-related services tend to have higher-than-average incomes. 

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we explore the market for mobile travel services, dive into travel-related mobile usage, analyze the data that explains why mobile travelers are attractive to brands and advertisers, and look at some of the barriers to growth in the mobile travel space, particularly the high cost of international data roaming.

Access The Full Report By Signing Up For A Free Trial Today >>

Here's a brief overview of the opportunity: 

• One-third of mobile travelers earn over $100,000 annually. Twelve percent make over $150,000. 
• A surprising proportion of these affluent mobile travelers, 71 percent, have downloaded a mobile app for loyalty or rewards programs they belong to. 
• A Google study of the role of mobile and travel found that affluent travelers— those earning over $250,000 annually— are increasingly turning to mobile devices for trip planning and travel-related information.
• Advertising revenue will  also flow to travel apps because they are able to ask for and collect location data from users. 
• Many travel-related apps already have audiences in the millions. 
• Some of the largest online travel companies already report a significant percentage of their bookings via mobile. 
• Mobile remains strong for last-minute hotel bookings: Hotel Tonight leverages the last-minute nature of many mobile-mediated travel bookings, Orbitz noted that "over 70% of reservations coming through smartphones are being done within a day of check-in," and Expedia reported that 68% of its mobile hotel reservations are done within 24 hours of the planned stay. Mobile has clearly created a channel through which to sell rooms that otherwise would remain unoccupied and unsold.
• Tourism, of course, is one of the world's largest industries, responsible for some $6 trillion in direct and indirect economic impacts. 

The report is full of charts and data that can be easily downloaded and put to use.

In full, the report:

• Explores the market for mobile travel services
• Looks at travel-related mobile usage
• Examines how mobile travelers are attractive to brands and advertisers
• Analyzes some of the barriers to growth in the mobile travel space, particularly the high cost of international data roaming

To access BI Intelligence's full report on The Mobile Tourist, sign up for a free trial subscription here.

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After opening up nearly 9% this morning following yesterday's strong earnings report, Netflix shares have fallen rapidly, and are now down over 8%.

Netflix earnings beat the consensus estimate by 14%. Revenues, net income, and total domestic subscriptions surprised to the upside as well.

Wall Street is concerned about the stock's valuation — it currently trades around 200 times trailing 12-month earnings.

BofA Merrill Lynch analysts Nat Schindler, Justin Post, and Jason Mitchell are among the most bearish analysts on Wall Street toward Netflix shares, maintaining an Underperform rating on the stock.

"Hard to find fault, but harder still to justify price," write the analysts in a note to clients this morning, describing the company's valuation as "sky high."

The Jefferies U.S. internet team, led by analyst Brian Fitzgerald, agrees.

"With a modest beat and 4Q outlook above consensus, NFLX now trades at 110x our new [2014 earnings per share]," write Jefferies analysts in a note to clients. "We find it difficult to justify this valuation given the risks of rising content costs, heavy competition, and the likelihood NFLX may need to raise additional capital to fund operations. Our model gives NFLX plenty of credit for go-forward growth and margin expansion, our 4Q estimates are above Street...yet we still see 45% downside to after-hours share price. Reiterate Underperform."

Still, others are bullish, looking for the stock to go higher.

"We believe the positive network effects of better content and more subscribers continues to play out, as Netflix disrupts linear TV," write JPMorgan internet analysts led by Doug Anmuth in a note. "We reiterate our Overweight on Netflix shares, and our PT goes to $460 based on our sum-of-the-parts analysis."

The chart below shows the drop today.

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You may soon have a less expensive way to get into space. A new space tourism venture plans to bring visitors 30km (about 100,000 feet) into the stratosphere in what is essentially a space-ready air balloon for $75,000. That's not high enough for weightlessness, but there should be a wonderful view of the curvature of the Earth, the blue atmosphere around it, and the dark void beyond. Those joining in on the trip won't have to undergo training, and they'll spend two hours up at that height, where they'll be free to stand and walk about the cabin. Trips could start as soon as 2016.

The new project comes from World View, which is a subsidiary of Paragon, which makes equipment for the International Space Station and other space...

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Respawn Entertainment's Titanfall will be available March 11, 2014, in North America and March 13 in Europe on Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Windows PC, the studio announced today.

The game will be available in a $249.99 Collector's Edition (image below) that comes with an 18-inch statue of a titan — complete with a motorized cockpit — set in a diorama with LED lighting. The package also includes a 190-page art book and a poster featuring a schematic diagram of the Atlas titan.

Interested parties can put down a $100 deposit on the Collector's Edition, which is being produced in "extremely limited quantities," at the Titanfall online store. Pre-orders of the $59.99 game itself are also available as of today on Origin, publisher Electronic...

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De populaire messaging applicatie WhatsApp heeft in een maand tijd 50 miljoen nieuwe gebruikers getrokken. De teller van het aantal WhatsApp gebruikers staat volgens CEO Jan Koum op 350 miljoen.

Niet alleen Windows RT struikelt over upgraden naar 8.1. Ook x86-pc's gaan niet allemaal vlekkeloos over. Drivers lijken de oorzaak.

De instorting van de pc-markt wordt in Europa gedempt doordat bedrijven nieuwe hardware aanschaffen, stelt IDC.

After a couple of high-profile reports about how the plastic iPhone isn’t faring too well in the laser-cut shadow of the iPhone 5s, here’s a bit of evidence to the contrary. It comes courtesy of stat collectors at an app marketing platform called Localytics, who claim they’ve spotted a distinct upwards trend in the number of Americans using a 5c relative to a 5s. Whereas usage of the flagship metal iPhone was 3.4x higher during the launch weekend, this ratio has drifted down to 1.9x one month later, suggesting that a secondary wave of not-so-early adopters is happy to give the cheaper model a bit more consideration. Of course, these ratios don’t tell us anything about absolute sales figures for either handset — we’ll have to wait on first-hand info from carriers or from Apple itself (perhaps as part of today’s event) before we know those.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Apple

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Source: Localytics

The post Stats suggest plastic iPhone 5c is catching up with its prettier sibling appeared first on AIVAnet.

Google Translate has supported handwriting input for a while now, and today that functionality arrives on two of Mountain View’s biggest products: Gmail and Google Docs. If you’ve played around with this feature in Translate, the format will look quite familiar; once your language input tool has been enabled (see the source link for the step-by-step instructions), select the pen icon from the toolbar in Docs or your email window, and start writing in the panel with the on-screen pen. As with Translate, the real benefit here is the ability to write several characters at once — especially useful for languages such as Chinese, Hindi and Japanese — and it could definitely speed up composing long emails or papers. Currently, Google Docs supports handwriting input for more than 20 languages, while Gmail can manage over 50. Head to the source link for more info.

Filed under: Internet, Google

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Source: Official Gmail Blog

The post Gmail and Google Docs now support handwriting input, make your Japanese term paper that much easier appeared first on AIVAnet.

The difficulties of integrating virtualised servers with the software necessary to secure them is creating unmanageable complexity that risks undermining the needs of both, a Trend Micro snapshot of European IT manager opinions has found.

Behalve het bouwen van een quantumcomputer, richt QuTech in Delft zich ook op quantumcryptografie.

DEN HELDER - Vliegveld De Kooy had maandag een primeur. Voor het eerst in de geschiedenis landde er een Amerikaans V-22 Osprey tiltrotor. Het vliegtuig was afkomstig van een Britse luchthaven en had als doel te verkennen of De Kooy geschikt is voor landen en opstijgen met dit vliegtuig. Als de rapportage gunstig uitvalt voor Den Helder, vindt vermoedelijk nog dit jaar een oefening plaats waaraan zowel de Nederlandse als de Amerikaanse luchtmacht zullen deelnemen.

Google's stock price broke $1,000 for the first time today, as investors continue to be impressed by the company's steady growth in search advertising. The 13 percent stock surge, which came a day after a stronger-than-expected earnings report from the company, doesn't make Google the most valuable tech company. That honor currently belongs to Apple, which has a market capitalization of $462.3 billion, compared to $338 billion for Google.

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Not every action film star can say they delivered enough one-liners to become a parody of themselves, but Arnold Schwarzenegger certainly can. Now, the former California governor is promoting his new film, Escape Plan, by offering to say any of those famous lines on camera. The fun has already started at Reddit, where he's told the online audience that they punch like a plant-eater. He's asked them to name their father and — equally importantly — to describe that man's job.

At press time, Schwarzenegger had not yet told anyone to board a helicopter, nor take a trip to Mars. He also had yet to shake hands with the male child of a female dog. We do, however, expect that he will say his farewells in Spanish — unless he decides he...

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