Bcstevieb

WGHP Fox 8 Television: WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Award-winning author, renowned poet and civil rights activist Dr. Maya Angelou has died. She was 86.

An easy-to-use, affordable 3D printer named MOD-t has hit Indiegogo for crowdfunding today, and is already enjoying a ton of popularity. The current early bird special offers the full kit for $149, while the final retail price will sit at $249. Though a low pricetag goes a long way to bringing 3D printing to the masses, the developer, New Matter, and their design partner, Frog, are going to equally great lengths to create make the printing process simple and accessible.

A lot of the focus on that front is through their desktop and mobile apps, which will showcase a curated store of designs which users can purchase, preview, and edit before printing. Meanwhile, designers get to make money by selling their blueprints. The MOD-t online catalog will show off finished products shared by other users, and show plenty of information about the designer that cooked it up.

The printer itself moves the building platform along two axes, leaving the extruder stationary. Casing will be available in black and white, enabling it to fit in just about anywhere around the house. The MOD-t should be shipping sometime in between February and May 2015. Any takers? Get backing MOD-t at Indiegogo before those early bird specials run out.

With LG's official launch of the G3, all major Android manufacturers have now unveiled their flagship smartphones for 2014. HTC has the One M8, and Samsung is of course garnering the most buzz (and sales) with its Galaxy S5. In many ways, it's a battle reminiscent of the one we saw last year when the G2, original One, and Galaxy S4 squared off. Samsung destroyed its rivals in that round — assuming you still believe the company has legitimate foes. But LG is hoping to establish its place in the smartphone race by leaping ahead on hardware specs instead of matching Samsung stride for stride as it did last year. The G3 has a gorgeous, super high-resolution display and a camera that focuses with lasers. Are these factors and others enough to...

Continue reading…

 Apple will be streaming this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote on June 2 at 10 AM PT (1 PM ET), the company announced today. Apple only sometimes streams live video of its special events, and never announces its intent to do so this far in advance, so this is an interesting development. The company doesn’t say what’s going to be on the docket at the show, but it… Read More

One of the cool things about Google Now is that Mountain View can tweak the way information is displayed by flipping a switch on its end. No action on your part is required to make the cards better and more informative. To that end, Google has been testing an updated version of the weather card for a few weeks, and judging by the barrage of tips we're getting, it looks like it's rolling out now.

• [Hands-On] Weather Flow (From The Creators Of Cocktail Flow) Is The New Prettiest Weather App Of The Moment
• Weather Underground Is Now Available For Google TV, Makes You Forget The Weather Channel You've Already Forgotten
• [Update: It's Live!] Google Maps Is About To Get An Update To v6.10, Adds A Ton Of New Public Transit Info And Features
• Wunderground Releases WunderMap For Android Tablets, A Unique Weather Application That's All About The Radar

New Google Now Weather Card Appears To Be Rolling Out To All was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Windows: Months after announcing its plans last year, Google has started blocking Chrome extensions for Windows users that aren't installed from the Chrome Web Store. Previously installed extensions may also automatically disabled.

The new policy is meant to protect Chrome users from malware:

Malware can change how browsers work by silently installing extensions on your machine that do things like inject ads or track your browsing activity. If you notice strange ads, broken web pages or sluggish browsing after installing some new software or plugins, you could be affected.

From now on, to protect Windows users from an attack, extensions can be installed only if they're hosted on the Chrome Web Store. With this change, extensions that were previously installed may be automatically disabled and cannot be re-enabled or re-installed until they're hosted in the Chrome Web Store.

In the official blog post, Google says developers will still be able to install their extensions locally for testing, and extensions installed via enterprise policies will also be supported.

Again, this only affects Windows users, and it's unclear which previously installed extensions Google will disable and prevent you from using. So, on the one hand, more security. On the other hand, possibly fewer extensions (Developers have to pay a small $5 registration fee to get their extensions in the Chrome Web Store).

Protecting Chrome Users from Malicious Extensions | Google Chrome Blog via The Next Web

Hong King's visual culture museum M+ has a fantastic site devoted to the city's ubiquitous neon signs, a glowing landscape of pop advertising that was one of the inspirations behind Ridley Scott's vision for Blade Runner. (via Laughing Squid)

Android: On most phones, the lock screen is just a step between you and what you want to do that adds a little security, but Start is a lock screen replacement that gives you quick shortcuts to calls, texts, favorite apps, even news and social feeds. You can check them all without unlocking first.

Start is a lot like a cross between previously mentionedCover and another great lock-screen customization tool, DashClock Widget, which we love. which is now owned by Twitter. Where Cover tries to float relevant apps at the right time, Start lets you customize those apps yourself, and focuses more on the "Starters" and mini-apps you can add to your lock screen that deliver things like the news, your Twitter or Facebook feed, missed calls or texts, and shortcuts to apps so you can open them immediately upon unlocking your phone. The video above is a good walkthrough of the app's features, although you obviously wouldn't want to add everything you see there to your lock screen (otherwise it kind of defeats the purpose of a lock screen being a gateway between a user and your phone's features.)

Beyond customizing apps and adding data to your lock screen, Start also lets you personalize the lock screen with visual themes and styles. The app has been designed to work with your phone's security instead of running against it (the way Cover tended to), so for anything beyond the things you allow, you'll still have to unlock your phone. Similarly, the team behind it says they went to great lengths to make sure it won't drain your battery, too. Start is free, and you can grab it at the link below.

Start (Free) | Google Play

 French startup Polagram just released a couple of new features and raised a round of funding. You can use the iPhone or Android app to print your photos directly from your phone and receive your prints a few days after ordering them. The app tries to get out of the way as much as possible, it’s just the missing link between your camera roll and your printed photos. The company raised… Read More

For years, Facebook users and app makers had an understanding: Use your account on the social network to log in, and we’ll all save a little time. The price seemed acceptable—even if Facebook was the ultimate winner, gaining insights into both consumer behavior and the mobile-app economy.

Now a growing sense of Facebook fatigue seems to threaten that balance, with users lashing out at apps that stick to Facebook for logins.

Barking Mad At Facebook

One new application, BarkBuddy, aims to make it easier for dogs to get adopted, and for humans to find a new best friend—but some people think it’s getting a little too friendly. The app, currently available for iPhones and iPads, requires a Facebook account and active location services before it shows users dogs in their area. The overwhelmingly negative comments on the App Store page echo the same thing: Requiring Facebook to use the application is bad. 

BarkBuddy is an app you want to love (and it does have some five-star reviews along with one- and two-star pans). The application uses an interface similar to dating app Tinder. It lets you swipe left if you’re not interested in the dog shown, or right if you want to add the dog to your favorites. (After trying it a few times, I can tell you that it’s really hard to swipe left on any of them.)

The app's design isn't the only way in which it resembles dating apps. Like Tinder, BarkBuddy requires a Facebook account to log in. But that doesn't make sense: While Tinder, the dating app BarkBuddy emulates, uses your Facebook account information to match you with friends of friends, dogs can't even have Facebook profiles. And users may not feel comfortable with a stranger working at a shelter reviewing their Facebook account as part of the adoption process. 

While BarkBuddy might be a cute way to save some animals' lives, that's not enough of a justification for some people. 

Almost all of BarkBuddy's one- and two-star reviews complain about the Facebook requirement. 

A Requirement That’s Too In Your Facebook

Chris O’Brien, the communications director for Bark & Co., the company behind BarkBuddy, told me that Facebook login won’t be mandatory forever. The company plans to add email registration and the option to share via text message and Twitter in a future version. Facebook registration, however, will be a part of the preapproval process for adoption when the company implements that option, O’Brien said. 

Lyft, the on-demand taxi service, relies on Facebook to verify the identities of drivers and passengers. The company wants to make sure drivers and passengers can recognize each other so no one gets into the wrong car. The company initially only used Facebook to verify the identity of users, but has since implemented an option that lets users connect with their phone number and email address.

It’s likely BarkBuddy aims to use personal information in a similar way to determine whether or not a person can provide a good home for a pet. That’s not likely to please users who say they don’t want to have a Facebook account in the first place.

So relying on Facebook to provide companies with accurate personal information is part of the problem. As people are increasingly wary of sharing their real identities with companies like Facebook and Google, the rationale for app developers to rely on those giants for to manage users’ identities becomes flawed.

Facebook recently launched a beta version of "Anonymous Login," an option that lets people use their Facebook accounts to log into an app without revealing their names or other personal information. The problem: Even though applications won't know your identity, Facebook will still be able to tell which applications you're using.

It's not services like BarkBuddy that people worry about as much as the disconcerting idea that social behemoth Facebook has access to virtually any app, and the data stored there. 

We've started to move away from Facebook for messaging, relying on apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp instead. Perhaps the same erosion is happening with all of the apps in Facebook’s orbit.

BarkBuddy facilitates pet adoptions, a serious business that seems like it ought to require far more than a Facebook account to verify whether someone is responsible enough to own a pet.

For users who don't connect with Facebook, Lyft now asks people to upload a Lyft profile image, rather than pulling it from their Facebook account—which very well might serve up a political protest symbol or a cute baby pic as a real photo. And the app could use other data from people’s phones, like location history and contact information, to get a sense of whether they're a trustworthy passenger. Lyft may have thought it needed Facebook when it launched, but it's clear it can get by without it now.

It’s understandable that some applications need your real identity in order to operate. But by conflating “real identity” with a Facebook account, companies alienate a set of users who don’t want Facebook to know which applications they’re using. In order to appeal to the largest possible audience, app developers are going to have to offer alternatives to Facebook, and let people decide for themselves whether they’re comfortable with Facebook knowing every little icon they tap on their phone.

Update 10:13 a.m. : An earlier version of this story did not mention Lyft's option to login with a phone number and email address.

Lead image by Found Animal Foundation; other images via BarkBuddy and Apple

Google has already kicked off its home automation plans with the purchase of Nest, the makers of smart thermostats and smoke detectors, but the company is rumored to be looking into purchasing Dropcam. This next potential acquisition is the brand behind security cameras that stream directly to a smartphone or tablet. According to The Information, Google are currently analyzing whether Dropcam would benefit the company's overall strategy.

Consumers are able to utilize Dropcam products to keep an eye on what's happening at home. Features include night vision, 8x zoom capabilities, two-way communication and even intelligent notifications. All this functionality is bundled with the live streaming, perfect for quickly glancing at what's currently in view of said security cameras. With Apple set to unveil its own smart home platform, it makes sense for Google's Nest division to look to expand.

Currently there aren't any details as to whether or not the two companies are in discussion about a potential deal being made. For the time being, be sure to take this rumor with a grain of salt, but it's certainly plausible that Google would want to continue building on its home automation portfolio.

Source: The Information, via: The Verge

Getting your hands on a budget tablet for around a hundred bucks isn't particularly challenging, but these decidedly underwhelming gadgets typically don't come with the latest version of Android. Toshiba intends to do budget shoppers one better by providing them with a 7-inch tablet with Android 4.4, all for $110. This little guy goes by the name of Excite Go.

Shipping with KitKat may just be the most stimulating aspect of the Excite Go.

• Toshiba Intros New Tegra 3-Powered Excite SE 10" Tablet With Jelly Bean 4.1, We Wonder Why They Even Bother
• Toshiba Excite 10 16GB/32GB Now Available For $450/$520 Respectively, 64GB Version Up For Pre-Order For $650
• Toshiba Announces New Excite Line For The U.S.: Say Hello To The 7.7, 10.1, and 13.3-inch Slates
• [Update: Hands-On Video] Toshiba Announces The Excite X10 For The U.S., Available Sometime In Q1

Toshiba Announces The Entry-Level Excite Go 7-Inch Tablet With Android 4.4 For $110 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

 As the ongoing dispute between Amazon and Hachette sees the huge online retailer continue to block and/or delay sales of some of the publisher’s books, two smaller startups in the industry are merging forces. Blurb, which lets authors self-publish and print their books, is buying Graphicly, a platform that lets authors publish and distribute e-books, with a specific focus on… Read More

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.

Featured App

Race Illegal: High Speed 3D

Today's roundup is presented by Race Illegal: High Speed 3D from HeroCraft.

• Epic Defense Is A Magical Twist On The Tower Defense Genre, Has Way More Than Two Towers
• [Bonus Round] Zombie Road Trip Trials, 1Path, And Just Escape
• [New Game] Melesta's Toy Defense Comes To Android – Become 'A Truly Great Leader' While Playing With Toys
• [New Game Review] Age Of Defenders Easily Overshadows Existing Tower Defense Games With A Polished, Thoughtful, Unique Approach

28 Best (And 2 WTF) New Android Games From The Last 2 Weeks (5/13/14 - 5/27/14) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

What the heck does that say? Is it even a language? Inapp Translator might be able to tell you what's up, and you won't even have to hop back and forth between apps. Once activated, Inapp Translator places a floating button on the screen that can pull up instant translations of the text in your clipboard.

The app will automatically detect the language, or you can select one manually. The translation will default to English, but there are 45 supported languages in the app (it's based on Microsoft translator).

• Keep Your Clipboard History A Long-Press Away With ClipStore And Button Shortcut
• Google Translate Adds 51 Offline Language Packs, Lets You Tear Down The Language Barrier Without A Network Connection
• [New App] Voice, Text Translator Vocre Comes To Android, Signature 'Table-Top UI' In Tow
• [Kind Of New App] Mime-O Soups Up Your Android Clipboard, Syncs It To Your PC

[New App] Inapp Translator Uses A Floating Button To Translate Between 45 Languages On The Fly was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Cinavia’s anti-piracy technology relies on a unique type of watermarking that allows it to remain present in pirated movies despite re-recording, transcoding, compression, or other type of transfer.

This means that camcordings of Cinavia-protected first-run movies, Blu-ray and DVDrips can be easily detected.

Support for the technology has been mandatory for all hardware and software Blu-ray players since 2012, which causes headaches for many pirates every day. Pirated movies protected by Cinavia work at first, but after a few minutes playback is halted and a warning notice appears on the screen instead.

“Audio outputs temporarily muted. Do not adjust the playback volume. The content being played is protected by Cinavia™ and is not authorized for playback on this device,” one of the notices reads.

Cinavia has been hailed as an unbeatable anti-piracy technology and up until today it was impossible to crack through a simple software solution. However, after several years DVD-Ranger has now solved the puzzle.

The company informs TorrentFreak that their Cinavia removing solution is now able to remove the play restrictions from pirated downloads in various video formats, something that was previously impossible.

“We have improved DVD-Ranger for use with torrent files. Now DVD-Ranger CinEx HD can remove Cinavia from downloaded torrent video files such as avi, mkv, mp4, mov and others,” DVD-Ranger’s Ingo Förster explains.

“The new module first scans the audio and then removes the Cinavia protection on the first pass. The contained video and subtitles will be handled pass-through, meaning that only the selected audio track will be re-encoded,” he adds.

On their website the software specifically targets BitTorrent pirates, many of whom have run into Cinavia protection in recent years. With DVD-Ranger’s “CinEx HD Advanced” software this is no longer a problem, although freedom doesn’t come cheap at $69.99 per license.

Förster and his colleague at DVD-Ranger have been working in the DVD-copying business for over a decade. For them, it was mostly the challenge that made them decide to break the Cinavia technology.

“Me and my partner are working both in science jobs and we were in contact with digital watermarks many years before Cinavia was born, so we know many things about digital watermarking. After we saw how many problems the major players such as DVDFab and Slysoft had with Cinavia, we started our own development,” Förster says.

Technically, Cinavia is not copy protection so the German based developer doesn’t believe they are breaking any laws. The files can be copied with and without a watermark, and their software only removes these “play” restrictions.

“In our country it is only forbidden to develop and sell software that circumvents copy protection. The law doesn’t mention digital watermarks. So is it legal? Definitely,” Förster notes.

In any case, DVD-Ranger’s breakthrough is likely to cause concern at Verance, the company where Cinavia is developed. Perhaps it’s the start of a new watermarking arms race?

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

Lion, Tiger, and Bear Are Best Friends Forever: Thirteen years ago, a lion, tiger, and bear were rescued from the basement of an Atlanta drug dealer's home. Now living in Noah's Ark Animal Sanctuary, the three are now the biggest BFFs in the animal kingdom.  

Hat tip to Art Scott.

The top 3 videos from the 2014 Best Illusion of the Year Contest are really good! Read the rest

Studio apartments can get pretty tiny, but MIT is working on a new arrangement that could make them feel a whole lot bigger. For several years now, it's been iterating on a concept product called CityHome that could efficiently pack key pieces of an apartment into a single modular unit, allowing owners to pull out a bed or a table and then store it again when they're through with it in order to free up space. Many concepts and even some actual products have already done this, but MIT's latest vision goes far beyond simple storage.

Continue reading…

While it's not exactly clear how much use it'll get, Google just launched a full-featured mobile web version of the Play Store. It's got everything - including devices. That means you can finally order a Nexus on your Nexus in a Nexus-friendly web page layout. Xzibit is going to be stoked.

  

The design is actually pretty nice, too. It's very clean, and it even has, you guessed it, a hamburger menu!

• Download: Latest Google Play Store v 3.7.11 (Jelly Bean Edition)
• Google Adds New 'My Apps' Interface, Remote Updates And Uninstall Features To The Play Store, Promises Smart Updates In The Future
• [Weekend Poll] Are You Content With Your Phone's Stock Battery Life?
• [All Good Things...] The Original Nexus 7 Is No Longer For Sale In The Google Play Store

The Google Play Store Finally Has A Mobile Web Interface, Take A Look was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Hot off the release of the new Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit, rumors are once again flying that Samsung may also be gearing up to release a stand-alone smartwatch that would work without the need to be connected to a phone. Much like the Neptune Pine or Omate TrueSmart watches, Samsung's offering would take its own SIM card and essentially be a wrist-size phone with full cellular connectivity.

The Tizen-powered device would offer not only many of the features currently found in the Gear devices like a camera, music player, and heart-rate monitor, but also things like email, GPS and phone calls. Samsung is currently talking to carriers in the U.S., South Korea and Europe about the new watch, which we could see announced as early as next month.

Still nothing official from Samsung, but this isn't the first time we've heard about a watch of this nature and it certainly won't be the last.

Would you buy a Samsung phonewatch? Let us know in the comments!

Source: WSJ

Setting voice reminders in Android is neat, but it's one of those processes that seems arbitrarily hobbled by the need to tap a button on the screen after you're done talking. Well, no more. Google has flipped a switch on the server side that makes the process work entirely by voice.

  

The new behavior will ask you to confirm by voice after the notification card is generated. If you say "yes," the reminder is set and you're done.

• Google Knowledge Graph Search Reminders Can Be Sent From Google Search On The Web To Google Now
• [Update: EVO 3D Too] Tip: Android 2.3.4 Update For HTC Sensations In Europe Enables Screenshot Shortcut
• Rumor: 'Remind Me When I'm With This Person' May Be Coming To Google Now
• Surprise! Google Search Update 2.8.7 Changes Hotword To 'Ok Google' And Enables Hotword From Search Results, After Language Pack Update

Google Finally Enables Reminders Set Entirely By Voice was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Doing night photography is one of my favorite things to do. Photographing the stars is one of the toughest parts of night photography. We’ve had a few articles on night photography and specifically the stars here on dPS. Here are some tips on star photography for you:

• Do you pack up and leave after sunset and miss the fun of night photography?
• Nightscapes: Photographing the City at Night
• How to Photograph the Stars

To give you some ideas of what’s possible with night photography and shooting the stars, here is a collection of star photographs.

The post A Collection of Dreamy Star Photography by Darlene Hildebrandt appeared first on Digital Photography School.

Almost everything is known about it, and LG is openly discussing its accessories, but now we've confirmed one final exciting spec for the LG G3: its camera will feature a laser autofocus system. Like HTC's second camera sensor on the One, this laser will detect the depth of the subject you want to photograph and help minimize the time it takes to go from tapping the digital shutter to capturing the photo. Its advantage over optical systems is greater precision and speed, the same reasons why it's used in desktop mice.

Fast and reliable autofocus is a signature part of the iPhone's universal appeal as a cameraphone. Few recent competitors have managed to match it, let alone beat it, but LG might just have a chance now that lasers are...

Continue reading…

Last week, in a coordinated attack by guerrilla artists across the UK, 365 outdoor ads were replaced by hand-printed works of art. It was a project of Brandalism, and they hit 10 cities, using hi-viz vests and steely nerves as camouflage while they did their work. Read the rest

Microsoft challenged a National Security Letter from the FBI last year – and won. The documents relating the case were recently unsealed, making the effort public. The gist is simple: Microsoft received a National Security Letter requesting “basic subscriber information” regarding an “enterprise” customer. That’s how Microsoft characterized the request.… Read More