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When Jony Ive sees designs from other companies that closely mimic Apple's, he isn't flattered. Apple's head of design told the audience at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit today that copying makes him angry. In response to a question about Xiaomi's highly Apple-like designs, Ive said his feelings were "a bit harsh." "I don't see it as flattery," he says, noting that he was speaking about the issue generally and not about Xiaomi specifically. "I actually see it as theft." Xiaomi, for its part, has denied being an Apple copycat. But the perception has stuck.

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When a dark-skinned man sneezed on a plane then joked about having ebola, the flight crew took no chances and called a team in hazardous material suits to escort him off the plane.

The passenger had never been in Africa. He did not have Ebola.

Android has what seems like a billion different weather apps available, but when it comes to getting the essential in an easy-to-read fashion, we prefer 1Weather.

1Weather

Platform: Android
Price: Free, $1.99 Pro
Download Page

Features

• Current weather conditions, hourly, and detailed 10-day forecast
• Real-time severe weather alerts
• Optional persistent notification in the menu bar with current conditions
• Animated radar and satellite with multiple layers
• Tons of themes and customization options
• No ads (Pro version only)

Where It Excels

1Weather crams just about all the weather info you could need in a simple-to-read interface, without feeling overly cluttered or confusing. Swipe to the right to visit different sections, like a forecast, graph view, radar, and more—each with their own separate tabs that customize the view (such as hour-by-hour or 10-day forecasts). It also comes with multiple themes, so you can tweak its looks to your heart's desire.

Where It Falls Short

While 1Weather's design is better than most weather apps—which often feel very cluttered—I do feel like its design could still be better. Yahoo Weather, for example, puts everything in one, simple, vertically-scrolling view, which is nicer than switching between tons of different tabs. Similarly. Apple's default weather app on the iPhone lets you expand certain portions of the interface for more info instead of putting everything in front of you. Little touches like this can make a big difference in usability. Still, 1Weather bests most of its competition.

The Competition

Yahoo Weather is my personal favorite of the bunch, and it solves most of my design issues with 1Weather. Everything you need is on one screen, with smaller (but still readable text), so as you scroll, you see the panels you want in descending order of common need (though you can rearrange them). It fits in all the important stuff without wasting space. Yahoo Weather's downfall, unfortunately, is its radar map, which does not move—a functionality quirk that keeps it from being our top pick.

Weatherbug has improved a lot since it was our top pick, but it just hasn't surpassed the more well-designed apps out there. Weatherbug suffers from an overload of clutter, making it hard to read at a glance like 1Weather. However, it probably offers more weather information than any of the others on the list—so if that's what you want, Weatherbug is for you.

The Weather Channel aims to mimic the great design Yahoo Weather pioneered, and it does an *okay* job. Its biggest annoyance, however, is the unnecessary stuff in between the useful tiles—gigantic ads, news and video from The Weather Channel, and something called "Social Weather," which I can't imagine I'd ever want. And, you can't move those tiles around, so I see little reason to use this over any of the others. AccuWeather has a similar problem, giving precedence to graphs and gimmicks that get in the way of the actual info you want.

If you want a different paradigm altogether, there are a few other cool apps out there too, like Nice Weather with its flat, minimalist look, or Eye in Sky Weather, which is about as simple to read as they come (but doesn't give you much beyond the basic temperatures and forecasts). If you want something truly simple, though, one of them will probably make you happy.

These are far from the only apps in the Play Store, but they're the most popular and the best we looked at. If you have a different favorite of your own, be sure to mention it in the discussions below.

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Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

Android: We've seen apps that lock other apps with passwords and ones that hide sensitive photos. Droid Protector does both, in a nice-looking package.

Droid Protector allows you to set per-app restrictions to keep nosy people out. You can also enable a fake "crash" dialog for a specific app if someone tries to access it without authorization. This app will also allow you to hide certain photographs or videos from prying eyes, which is a particularly handy feature that complements the other features so well, you'd wonder why other apps don't already do both.

Droid Protector | Google Play Store via Guiding Tech

 A new mobile application called Snowball, launching today, is going to give iPhone users Android envy. The app serves as a universal inbox for your many mobile messaging clients, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, Snapchat, Google Hangouts and more, and appears right on your Android homescreen in a format that resembles the small, circular “Chat Heads” icons introduced… Read More

Android: Offtime cuts out phone distractions by switching off apps, calls and texts, only allowing people and apps you choose. It also tracks your usage and lets you auto-schedule focussed time based on your calendar.

Set up a profile, choose which people and apps you want to allow when you are running Offtime, and finally set the amount of time you want to focus. In any profile, tap the Settings cog wheels icon in the corner to choose your auto-reply SMS message, how calls are handled (including soft-blocking, which lets a repeat call through), ringtones, notifications, and the ability to schedule your profile via your calendar. If you've noted a task, at its start time, Offtime will kick into action.

Once you start Offtime, it's up to you how strict you want to be. By default, you can manually stop it with a long press, but you also have the option to set Offtime in a way where it can't be stopped manually.

Offtime also tracks which apps you are using, who you are interacting with, and other phone data to present graphical statistics about how you use your phone. This could help you figure out where you are losing time in a day.

If Offtime isn't for you, you can check out a few other apps that offer such focus-boosting features like Sanity to block incoming calls and texts.

Offtime (Free) | Google Play Store via TechCrunch

Google recently added a new feature to Google Now in which it will remind you to pay upcoming bills. Now, Google Now also lets you ask what's coming up—just invoke Google Now and say "Show me my bills" or "my bills due this week."

It's a small update to a feature that rolled out earlier this year, but it's certainly a nice addition! See more about the original feature below. [via PC World]

Lifehacker veterans will know the "site:" operator you can use to only search Lifehacker within Google. Apparently someone told Google about this trick, so now the company has built it right into search results itself.

If you're tired of typing "site:lifehacker.com" you can create custom search engines in Chrome. However, if you don't search a specific site frequently (or want to teach a less tech-savvy person how to do so), just enter the name of a site in Google. Last month, the company quietly added a search box in the list of results that will perform the "site:" operator itself.

This isn't a revolution in usability, but it does put an incredibly powerful tool a bit closer to your hands. And, perhaps more importantly, closer to the hands of those who may not instinctively use search operators in daily life.

An improved search box within the search results | Google Webmaster Central Blog via Torrent Freak

The entertainment industries have gone head to head with Google in recent months, demanding tougher anti-piracy measures from the search engine.

According to the RIAA, MPAA and others, Google is making it too easy for its users to find pirated content. Instead, they would prefer Google to remove sites such as the Pirate Bay from its search results.

Thus far this hasn’t happened and it’s unlikely that the position will change in the near future. The search engine has changed Pirate Bay’s appearance in the search results, however, but not in the direction the copyright holders had hoped for.

A few weeks ago Google announced its new and improved “sitelinks” section. This section appears when searching for keywords related to large sites, including The Pirate Bay, and lists links to popular sections of the site.

In an additional new move, it now shows a prominent search box that people can use to search for content on The Pirate Bay directly from Google.

Google’s Pirate Bay search box

The feature also works with other large search related sites and wasn’t intended for The Pirate Bay specifically. However, considering the entertainment industries’ previous critique this will soon be added to their long list of complaints.

Perhaps even more painful than the search box itself is the fact that the new sitelinks also support AutoComplete. This means that people get pirate-themed search suggestions if they use the box in question.

Simply typing in the letter G shows the following search suggestions, for example.

Pirate autocomplete

It’s unclear where these suggested terms are sourced from. They could come from popular searches on Google that relate to The Pirate Bay, or perhaps they are based on Pirate Bay pages that are indexed by the search engine.

It’s worth noting that the “pirate” AutoComplete appears to go against Google’s policy of not showing copyright-infringing suggestions. Regular Google searches don’t suggest “Pirate Bay” when entering “Pirate B” for example.

And things could get even worse in the future.

For now, the custom Pirate Bay search box returns its results within Google. However, if The Pirate Bay decides to implement the right markup it will take users directly to The Pirate Bay, which is likely to escalate the situation further.

The Pirate Bay team is aware of Google’s new feature and is considering adding support for these direct searches. Whether Google will allow that to happen remains to be seen.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Do tell them their names, Pike

Don’t panic! Don’t panic!

The full cast for Oliver Parker’s remake of the classic Jimmy Perry-David Croft sitcom, Dad’s Army, has finally been announced, and it reads like a Who’s Who-do-you-think-you-are-kidding-Mr-Hitler of British acting talent. We know that there’ll be scepticism and cynicism in some quarters about this update of a beloved institution, but here at Empire Towers, we’re genuinely enthused and excited by the prospect. And when we tell you the names of the cast involved, belying Captain Mainwaring’s famous order, hopefully you’ll share that excitement.

On board as the fastidious, uptight Captain Mainwaring, leader of the beleaguered Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard, we have Toby Jones, replacing the legendary Arthur Lowe. As his right-hand man, the eternally suave Sgt. Wilson, Bill Nighy steps into John Le Mesurier’s shoes; perfect casting if ever we saw it.

Speaking of perfect casting, The Inbetweeners’ gawky Blake Harrison will take on Private Pike, the gauche newcomer created so memorably by Ian Lavender. Along with Daniel Mays, seemingly spot-on as the sleazy spiv Walker (first played by James Beck), those two represent the young blood in a cast that admirably focuses on elder statesmen.

So we also have Michael Gambon as Godfrey (played by Arnold Ridley in the original show), Bill Paterson giving it his best ‘we’re doomed! We’re doomed!’ as Private Fraser (the spelling seems to have changed for the movie version), while Tom Courtenay will be screaming ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ as Private Jones, the role originated by the great Clive Dunn.

Bill Nighy (Wilson)

Toby Jones (Captain Mainwaring)

Tom Courtenay (Corporal Jones)

Michael Gambon (Godfrey)

Blake Harrison (Pike)

Danny Mays (Walker)

Bill Paterson (Fraser)

The cast is rounded out by the likes of Sarah Lancashire, Alison Steadman and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who will play a journalist sent to Walmington-on-Sea to interview the Home Guard as the Second World War winds down. Her arrival, which stirs the blood of the men, also coincides with news from MI5 that a spy is on the loose. Plot ahoy!

Filming will start this month entirely on location in Yorkshire. It’s going to be mighty interesting watching this one. Will the new cast bring their own tics and quirks to their roles, or will they be indebted to what’s gone before? How will a modern audience react? How will long-serving Dad’s Army fans (some of you have already been dismissing the movie on our Twitter feed) welcome the new version? And, most importantly, will it be as funny as the original?

For Empire’s part, this opens the prospect of further remakes of classic British sitcoms from the 70s and 80s. Perhaps even a shared Croft & Perry-verse, Avengers-style, could launch ‘Allo ‘Allo, It Ain’t Half Hot, Mum, and Hi-De-Hi franchises, building to one single crossover movie, The Age Of Mrs Slocombe’s Pussy.

Thoughts on this? Potential tragedy or potential triumph? Do tell.

At its simplest, Endgame: The Calling is a novel about 12 teenagers scattered around the globe, participating in a high-stakes competition with the threat of the apocalypse and near-certain death looming. But the Endgame universe sprawls much further than a single book.

Endgame will eventually combine three novels with a host of other material, including shorter novellas, movies, and alternate-reality games (some of which lead to massive cash prizes of real gold) put together by Google’s...

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I could watch this video all day.

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.

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33 Best New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (9/23/14 - 10/6/14) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

 Photo-sharing service 500px announced today that it’s one of the first developers participating in the public beta of Adobe’s Creative SDK, which allows app developers to integrate Creative Cloud services into their mobile apps. This will allow 500px iOS users to edit photos using tools from the Photoshop and Lightroom apps for iOS and upload to the cloud for further editing on… Read More

I already can (and do) nap anywhere, but the Nap Anywhere looks like it would make it more comfortable to do so. Here's a video demo. (Thanks, Tanya Schevitz!)

A group of architects, engineers, and artists proposed a novel way of creating protected bike lanes in traffic-clogged London: a floating bike highway along the Thames. The path, called the Thames Deckway, would run east-west along the river’s southern bank for about seven miles, from Battersea to Canary Wharf.

"London needs to think outside the box of conventional solutions to solve its deep-seated traffic and pollution problems, the River Cycleway Consortium said in a statement announcing the proposal. "The river Thames, London’s main transportation thoroughfare from Roman times up to the 19th century, is overlooked today as a major travel artery except for a handful of passenger boats."

The route will float with the tides

Designers...

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