Your preferred sleep position and pillow greatly influence your posture and chronic pain. If you have neck, shoulder, back, or other pains—or want to avoid them—consider this infographic’s sleep position recommendations.
The graphic comes from the Cleveland Clinic, via SheKnows. It highlights the do’s and dont’s for five common types of chronic pain: neck pain, shoulder pain, lower back pain, jaw pain and headaches, and hip pain. It’s similar to a previous graphic we saw at the Wall Street Journal, but recommends the best and worst positions by type of pain.
Switching your default sleep position isn’t always easy, but if the way you’re sleeping is exacerbating or causing your pain, changing position is worth a try.
Camera Instructor is a free web-based photography school that teaches you the fundamentals of photography through videos and interactive exercises.
It’s taught by photographer and programmer Cody Meyer, and each lesson starts with an instructional video followed by mini exercises (using in-browser camera simulators) that test what you learned.
There’s only one course available now, Photography 101—with 8 lessons covering the exposure triangle and shutter speed, but courses on portraits, landscapes, and weddings are in the works. Even with only 8 lessons so far, the site is a nice resource for those who want to get more out of their camera and are new to photography fundamentals.
Camera Instructor makes money through affiliate links for things like camera accessories (surprise!).
Our pick of the top Android devices out of this week's Taipei show
Computex isn't normally a huge highlight of the year for new Android device launches, but this year's show has been full of hidden gems — interesting, unusual and head-turning devices worthy of any Android fan's attention. As the Taipei-based tradeshow starts to wind down, it's time to bring you our list of device picks from the event, which has hosted an eclectic mix of wearables, smartphones, tablets and entertainment devices.
Head past the break for the rundown of Android Central device picks from Computex 2015.
Before there were tools like IFTTT, which lets you mash up data from web services along with other content in new ways, there was Yahoo Pipes, an online (and somewhat geeky) visual interface that let you aggregate and filter web data without requiring the end user to have programming skills. But now Yahoo Pipes is being laid to rest. The service will soon close down, along with… Read More
Chrome for Android is starting to get a smart new tool today that works a lot like a simplified version of the impressive Now on Tap feature that Google unveiled last week. The new feature is called Touch to Search, and it allows you to tap a word and have Chrome immediately pull up search results for it. It isn't quite as capable as Now on Tap — it only works within Chrome and is limited to giving you search results — but it does take hints from the upcoming feature, such as using context around the word you've tapped to help guide its search.
The feature has been in Chrome for Android's beta for a little while, but Android Central reports that it's starting to see it become available for all Chrome users. It hasn't rolled out to...
Google launched a new batch of regular and underwater Street View imagery today that lets you swim with humpback whales off the Cook Islands, dive with parrot fish off the coast of Bali, or walk on a beach in American Samoa. In total, the company added more than 40 new Street View locations with this update — one of the biggest releases of new underwater imagery since the company… Read More
Ebay today is expanding its professional selling service known as eBay Valet, where select, pre-approved Bay sellers will handle listing, selling and shipping items on consumers’ behalf in exchange for a split of the sales. The service will now accept high-end clothing, the company says, marking eBay’s desire to compete with a growing number of e-commerce sites and online… Read More
The first Android Wear device rocking sapphire on the display is on its way, and here's what it is running underneath.
Huawei's launch event for their first Android Wear gadget made it abundantly clear the target was a high-end device that placed looks and function on equal footing. With the most watch-like design we've seen so far — especially if you're a fan of round designs — and the promise of multiple color options at launch, this device is quite the looker.
What's going on under that classy casing, you ask? Well, here's the answer.
There's lots to wrap your head around in Google Photos, but the new Assistant feature is here to help.
Whether you want to check up on the status of your photo backups, see the Creations that Google Photos has made for you, or be alerted of space to be freed up on your device, Assistant is the place to go. It's just a tap, swipe, or click away from your photo library, and it'll keep you in the loop with what's going on in the Google Photos world.
It's like an all-in-one notification center for everything that's happening with your photos, and it's quite useful. Here's how you use it.
If you just opened up Google Photos for the first time and got straight into viewing photos, you may have missed the Assistant area. You'll find the menu in the slide-in left panel of the Google Photos app or website or by simply swiping to the right across the main gallery view.
The Assistant is appropriately named, as it's the one place where you'll get updates about what's happening with your Google Photos library. You'll get Google Now-like cards that show when photos are being backed up, whether the phone is waiting to charge before uploading, and when new "Creations" (formerly known as Auto Awesomes) are available to view and act on. You can even get notified when your device is running low on internal storage and with a single tap clear out local versions of photos that have already been backed up to Google Photos.
Cards will each offer you different actions, but in general they'll be pretty basic — either act on the item with a tap on the function at the bottom, or swipe away the card to dismiss it. Some notifications in Assistant such as a battery upload warning can't be swiped away but will clear on their own once the function has been completed.
How to view Assistant notifications
Open Google Photos.
Tap on the plus icon at the bottom left of your screen to open Assistant. Here you will see cards with new creations, and other notifications.
How to enable Google Photos notifications
Open Google Photos.
Tap the overflow button in the upper left corner of your screen. It looks like three stacked lines.
Tap on the gear icon to open settings.
Scroll down and tap on the toggle to turn notifications on or off.
How to disable Assistant cards
Open Google Photos.
Tap the overflow button in the upper left corner of your screen. It looks like three stacked lines.
Tap on the gear icon to open settings.
Tap on Assistant cards.
Tap on the toggle to disable the type of Assistant card you don't want to see anymore.
With Assistant at the ready, you'll never be left out of what's happening in your Google Photos library.
The U.K. government is facing a legal challenge to surveillance legislation that was rushed through parliament last year. At the time the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill was criticized for granting the government overly broad and draconian powers to retain digital comms data — and for the lack of parliamentary time afforded for proper scrutiny. Read More
There's no nice way to say this: May kind of sucked for new apps. There were a lot of notable updates to major existing apps (including a slew of Material Design updates), but the biggest news of the month came from Microsoft, of all places. Oh well - a short field just means it's that much easier to pick your bets. Here in no particular order are our top picks for the month of May, and a few runners up.
Android: One of the most helpful features of Google’s Android keyboard is keeping your own personal dictionary. Not only does this save words you use that aren’t necessarily in the regular dictionary, but it can be a handy shortcut. Now, your custom changes can sync across devices.
Stricly speaking, the option to sync your dictionary has been sort of available for a while, though it was only available through your Google Account Dashboard, which is a pretty silly place for it. Now, you can manage your sync options directly from the Google keyboard settings. Finally, no more teaching a new device your nuances all over again. The update is rolling out now, or you can skip the line and get the updated version from APK Mirror here.
The new trailer for Chris McQuarrie’s generously punctuated Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation was deployed (via covert operation) onto the internet this morning and you can watch it below.
Reuniting Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), Benji (Simon Pegg), Brandt (Jeremy Renner) and Luther (Ving Rhames) and introducing Rebecca Ferguson’s Isla to the line-up, Rogue Nation sees the IMF up against the shadowy Syndicate: essentially an evil IMF, hellbent on their destruction. From what we’ve seen of the film so far (including some extended sequences at this year’s CinemaCon), things are shaping up nicely, with the usual mix of playful humour, improbable stunts and Cruise reducing loss adjusters to tears by doing the insane stunts himself.
{Rogue Nation Posters}
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is released in the UK on 30 July.
The biggest Android gaming news of the month was certainly the release of NVIDIA's SHIELD Android TV, and it brought with it quite a few high-profile PC ports. But since the vast majority of readers don't have one, I've decided to restrict this month's top picks to more general smartphone and tablet games. Fear not, SHIELD early adopters: you get your own picks down there below the honorable mention section.
Grim Fandango is widely considered one of the best point-and-click adventure games ever made, and now it can be had on Android for the hefty sum of ten bucks.
Helped by the MPAA, Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood launched a secret campaign to revive SOPA-like censorship efforts in the United States.
The MPAA and Hood want Internet services to bring website blocking and search engine filtering back to the table after the controversial law failed to pass.
In response to the looming threat Google filed a complaint against Hood last December, asking the court to prevent Hood from enforcing a subpoena that addresses Google’s failure to take down or block access to illegal content, including pirate sites.
This resulted in a victory for Google with District Court Judge Henry Wingate putting the subpoena on hold. At the same time Google requested additional details from the Attorney General and various other parties involved in the scheme, including the MPAA.
Thus far, however, these requests haven’t proven fruitful. In a motion to compel directed at the MPAA (pdf), Google explains that the movie industry group and other petitioned parties have yet to hand over the requested information.
“To date, the subpoenaed parties have produced nothing,” Google’s lawyers inform the court.
“They have inexplicably delayed producing the few documents they agreed to turn over, and have objected that many of their documents, including internal notes or summaries of meetings with AG Hood, are irrelevant or protected by some unsubstantiated privilege.”
In addition to the MPAA, Google has also filed similar motions against the MPAA’s law firm Jenner & Block, Digital Citizens Alliance, 21st Century Fox, NBC Universal and Viacom.
All parties thus far have refused to hand over the requested information, which includes communication with and prepared for the Attorney General, as well as emails referencing Google.
According to the MPAA this information is “irrelevant” or privileged, but Google disagrees.
“The relevance objections are meritless. As Judge Wingate has already held, there is substantial evidence that the Attorney General’s actions against Google were undertaken in bad faith and for a retaliatory purpose,” the motion reads.
According to Google’s legal team the documents will shine a light on how the MPAA and others encouraged and helped the Attorney General to push for Internet censorship.
“Google expects the documents will show that the Attorney General, the Subpoenaed Parties, and their lobbyists understood that his actions invaded the exclusive province of federal law,” the motion reads.
“More fundamentally, the documents are likely to show that the Attorney General’s investigation was intended not to uncover supposed violations of Mississippi law, but instead to coerce Google into silencing speech that Viacom, Fox, and NBC do not like…”
District Court Judge James Boasberg has referred the case to a magistrate judge (pdf), who will discuss the matter in an upcoming hearing. Considering the stakes at hand, the players involved will leave no resource untapped to defend their positions.
Tech companies regularly spin their products as innovative revolutions that disrupt existing standards and push humans further along the evolutionary tract. So when each new app comes along with promises of raising the bar, it's easy to be skeptical. Just because SoundHound recently released a competitor to Google Now, that doesn't mean it will be any good.
Well, from the looks of the latest video to appear on Hound's YouTube page, the voice assistant's natural speech recognition is actually pretty amazing. In the demonstration, we see Hound speedily respond to obscenely specific inquiries, such as: "How many days are there between the day after tomorrow and three days before the second Thursday of November of 2022?" The answer, according to Hound, is 2714 days between the day after tomorrow and Monday, November 7th, 2022.
As a slave to fashion, I have to look great all the time. But how can I do that when I have to wear so many amazing wearables? You can’t have fashion and electronics. Luckily, Tokyoflash has just the thing. Called the Kisai Link, this is basically a little Bluetooth dongle that you wear on your wrist. It notifies you of phone calls and messages via various blinking LEDs as well as… Read More
No words are needed in this photo series, which tells the emotional story of an emaciated, badly infected dog, and the man who saved it. The photos at the beginning are intense, and the happy photos at the end brought tears to my eye.
UPDATE: His name is Wilson Martins Coitinho and rehabilitating injured and abused animals is his thing.
One of the brief glimpses Magic Leap has given of its work.
Augmented-reality innovator Magic Leap is launching a developer platform for third-party coders to build products on top of its technology. CEO Rony Abovitz announced on stage earlier this week at MIT Technology Review'sEmTech Digital Conference that a software-development kit, or SDK, will be available soon.
It's another significant step forward for the company that first attracted widespread attention in October after a substantial round of funding—Google and Qualcomm were two of the companies willing to bet more than half a billion dollars in total on Magic Leap's potential.
A video released in March stoked speculation about what Magic Leap was offering in the fast-growing field of augmented reality. Unlike virtual reality, which substitutes a 360-degree view of another world for the physical one around you, augmented reality overlays digital additions on top of a view of the real world.
Magic Leap's fundraising efforts and the subsequent video raised a lot of questions, and we've had few answers since: All we know for sure is that it involves augmented reality but details of the scope of the technology and any associated hardware remain unclear.
Abovitz has offered a few hints about his company's endeavors, explaining in a Reddit AMA that the system in development creates a "profound" and "awesome" experience (and throwing some shade in the direction of Microsoft HoloLens at the same time).
Developers, Assemble
Another Magic Leap promotional image.
Magic Leap's newly opened Developers page invites interested parties to register their interest via an online form. The new SDK will be compatible with the Unreal and Unity game engines, both popular resources for developers and perhaps some indication of where Magic Leap is headed.
Here's how the company is currently teasing developers:
Using our Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal, imagine being able to generate images indistinguishable from real objects and then being able to place those images seamlessly into the real world. Imagine what experiences you could create if you had this ability. Imagine how this would completely transform how people interact with both the digital and real worlds. Imagine you being one of the first to help transform the world forever.
As TechCrunch reports, Magic Leap has recently built a 300,000-square-foot facility in Florida to manufacture chips for the aforementioned Dynamic Digitized Lightfield Signal. Indications are that it shoots light directly into the eye, rather than displaying a screen in front of it (as Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens do).
The company now sounds ready to share some of its magic sauce with developers—after the appropriate NDAs have been signed of course—but the rest of us will have to keep speculating. If the finished platform is anything like the demo video above, then there's plenty of potential for developers to tap into.
"We're out of the R&D phase and into the transition to real product introduction," Abovitz said on stage, though based on the length of their jobs page there's still a long way to go.
Vimeo now allows filmmakers to offer monthly subscriptions to their videos, giving them a way to ensure recurring payments from their viewers. The subscriptions, which launched yesterday, all give unlimited access to an individual series for a monthly payment. That could get costly — Netflix, for instance, offers access to a huge library of content for $8.99 per month — but it's an option that publishers could appreciate. At the right price, some filmmakers should be able to get fans to pay each month to see their latest work.
Paid series on Vimeo don't have to offer subscriptions, and those offering subscriptions can still offer rentals and purchases — this is just another option. Vimeo also says that this is only the "first phase" of...
With potentially unlimited storage at your disposal there are few reasons to delete photos, but if you do there are a few things to know.
Whether you need to clear out duplicates, limit the amount of full-resolution storage you're taking up or just get rid of some old shots you no longer want, you may need to delete photos from your Google Photos albums from time to time. The "access all of your photos everywhere" system is really cool, but it also introduces a few head scratching moments when you go to delete photos from the service.
We're going to help clarify the situation, and once you understand the system you won't be so worried about what's happening to your photos.
A few days ago, we wrote about Google's new My Account interface, which had its material design debut coinciding with Google I/O. The new interface makes checking and adjusting your security and privacy settings both beautiful and easy.
The My Account page wasn't the only account management tool that got some material love though - Google's account history interface has also received a facelift. The account history page now ties together all your history from various Google services - history is broken into Web & App, Voice & Audio, Device info, Location, YouTube Watch, and YouTube Search, along with a general heading to turn on or off history for each of the above sections.
In the long-running case of the U.S. Government versus Kim Dotcom, almost every court decision achieved by one side is contested by the other. A big victory for the U.S. back in March 2015 is no exception.
After claiming that assets seized during the 2012 raid on Megaupload were obtained through copyright and money laundering crimes, last July the U.S. government asked the court to forfeit bank accounts, cars and other seized possessions connected to the site’s operators.
Dotcom and his co-defendants protested, but the Government deemed them fugitives and therefore disentitled to seek relief from the court. As a result District Court Judge Liam O’Grady ordered a default judgment in favor of the U.S. Government against assets worth an estimated $67m.
Following a subsequent request from the U.S., New Zealand’s Commissioner of Police moved to have the U.S. forfeiture orders registered locally, meaning that the seized property would become the property of the Crown. Authorization from the Deputy Solicitor-General was granted April 9, 2015 and an application for registration was made shortly after.
In response, Kim Dotcom and co-defendant Bram Van der Kolk requested a judicial review of the decision and sought interim orders that would prevent the Commissioner from progressing the registration application, pending a review. The Commissioner responded with an application to stop the judicial review.
In a lengthy decision handed down this morning, Justice Ellis denied the application of the Commissioner while handing a significant interim victory to Kim Dotcom.
Noting that the “fugitive disentitlement” doctrine forms no part of New Zealand common law, Justice Ellis highlighted the predicament faced by those seeking to defend themselves while under its constraints.
“The application of the fugitive disentitlement doctrine to a person who is exercising a bi-laterally recognized right to defend an eligibility hearing, with the result that he is deprived of the financial means to mount that defense, is to put that person on the horns of a most uncomfortable and (the plaintiffs would say) unconstitutional dilemma,” Justice Ellis writes.
Recognizing that Dotcom and Van der Kolk have a “substantial position to preserve”, Justice Ellis says there would be “very real consequences” if they were unable to do so.
“If the provisional view I have formed about the unavailability of post-registration relief is correct, authorizing the registration application to proceed now might deprive the plaintiffs of any ability to defend the extradition or to pursue their appeals against the forfeiture order in the United States,” Justice Ellis said.
“I have little hesitation in concluding that interim relief should therefore be granted.”
The New Zealand Commissioner of Police is now barred from taking further action to register the U.S. forfeiture orders until the court indicates otherwise.
Kim Dotcom informs TorrentFreak that his New Zealand legal team are “relieved” by the decision and can’t wait to “get back to work and beat this bogus extradition case.”
Elsewhere, the battle continues. Dotcom says that the decisions handed down in New Zealand will be presented in Hong Kong in an attempt to get more assets unfrozen there. Over in the U.S. there is also much work to be done.
“Our US lawyers are still bound by the US forfeiture judgment and won’t be allowed to accept funds from my unfrozen assets without a significant risk to them, unless the US government allows that, which is unlikely. But we have appealed the US Forfeiture judgment in the US and the team is optimistic that we will prevail,” he notes.
Megaupload’s U.S.-based lawyer Ira Rothken joined Dotcom in welcoming today’s ruling.
“We are grateful that the NZ court ruled in favor of fairness, natural justice, and due process today by stopping US efforts to take Kim Dotcom’s NZ assets for doing nothing more than opposing extradition to the US – a country he has never been to,” Rothken said.
In closing, a fiery Dotcom reiterated his intention to keep battling.
“The big fights are yet to come and I can’t wait to expose the US government and Hollywood for the most unlawful and corrupt law enforcement action ever taken against an Internet service provider. US attorney Jay Prabhu, the DOJ clown who lost control of the Megaupload domain recently, will only find a job at the MPAA after we are done with him,” Dotcom concludes.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.
Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
Featured App
Expense IQ - Expense Manager
This week's roundup is brought to you by Expense IQ - Expense Manager from Handy Apps.
We’ve gathered the best cheap tablets that offer a solid experience without breaking the bank. "Cheap" is a fine line, but we’re setting the bar at $250 — get close to zero and we get into some sketchy hardware; much higher is hard to call cheap. These are the best bang for your buck.
Clearly making users more productive means providing internet access no matter where they go. According toVentureBeat, the software company is currently developing a cross-platform service that will offer "hassle-free" Wi-Fi around the world.
The new service, called Microsoft WiFi, was first seen online by Twitter user WalkingCat — who also first noticed the OneClip app — and the site has since been replaced with a "Coming Soon" graphic. However, in a statement sent to VentureBeat, a Microsoft representative confirms that the new venture is forthcoming. "We can confirm that we are working on a new service, called Microsoft WiFi, that will bring hassle-free Wi-Fi to millions," a representative said. "We look forward to sharing additional...
Computex isn't normally a huge highlight of the year for new Android device launches, but this year's show has been full of hidden gems — interesting, unusual and head-turning devices worthy of any Android fan's attention. As the Taipei-based tradeshow starts to wind down, it's time to bring you our list of device picks from the event, which has hosted an eclectic mix of wearables, smartphones, tablets and entertainment devices.
Before there were tools like IFTTT, which lets you mash up data from web services along with other content in new ways, there was Yahoo Pipes, an online (and somewhat geeky) visual interface that let you aggregate and filter web data without requiring the end user to have programming skills. But now Yahoo Pipes is being laid to rest. The service will soon close down, along with… Read More
Google launched a new batch of regular and underwater Street View imagery today that lets you swim with humpback whales off the Cook Islands, dive with parrot fish off the coast of Bali, or walk on a beach in American Samoa. In total, the company added more than 40 new Street View locations with this update — one of the biggest releases of new underwater imagery since the company… Read More
Ebay today is expanding its professional selling service known as eBay Valet, where select, pre-approved Bay sellers will handle listing, selling and shipping items on consumers’ behalf in exchange for a split of the sales. The service will now accept high-end clothing, the company says, marking eBay’s desire to compete with a growing number of e-commerce sites and online… Read More
The U.K. government is facing a legal challenge to surveillance legislation that was rushed through parliament last year. At the time the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill was criticized for granting the government overly broad and draconian powers to retain digital comms data — and for the lack of parliamentary time afforded for proper scrutiny. Read More
There's no nice way to say this: May kind of sucked for new apps. There were a lot of notable updates to major existing apps (including a slew of Material Design updates), but the biggest news of the month came from Microsoft, of all places. Oh well - a short field just means it's that much easier to pick your bets. Here in no particular order are our top picks for the month of May, and a few runners up.
The biggest Android gaming news of the month was certainly the release of NVIDIA's SHIELD Android TV, and it brought with it quite a few high-profile PC ports. But since the vast majority of readers don't have one, I've decided to restrict this month's top picks to more general smartphone and tablet games. Fear not, SHIELD early adopters: you get your own picks down there below the honorable mention section. 
Helped by the MPAA, Mississippi State Attorney General Jim Hood launched a secret campaign to revive SOPA-like censorship efforts in the United States.
Tech companies regularly spin their products as innovative revolutions that disrupt existing standards and push humans further along the evolutionary tract. So when each new app comes along with promises of raising the bar, it's easy to be skeptical. Just because SoundHound recently released a competitor to Google Now, that doesn't mean it will be any good.
As a slave to fashion, I have to look great all the time. But how can I do that when I have to wear so many amazing wearables? You can’t have fashion and electronics. Luckily, Tokyoflash has just the thing. Called the Kisai Link, this is basically a little Bluetooth dongle that you wear on your wrist. It notifies you of phone calls and messages via various blinking LEDs as well as… Read More
In the long-running case of the U.S. Government versus Kim Dotcom, almost every court decision achieved by one side is contested by the other. A big victory for the U.S. back in March 2015 is no exception.
Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.
