Carphone Warehouse and Dixons are set to announce a £3.7bn merger that will create one of the biggest high street technology groups in Britain. Further details regarding the merger will be made available to a Takeover Panel ahead of the May 19 deadline.
Android: The next time you need to meditate, relax or fall asleep, fire up Doze on your Android phone and let its relaxing sounds take over. The app bears a minimalistic interface and is completely free, without any ads.
Doze lets you choose a "sleep timer" if you need one, between three, five and 10 tracks. If you don't want that, hit play and it will endlessly stream relaxing music—a mixture of sounds of the nature (chirping birds, rain) interspersed with a light piano track, chimes, and vocals. And as you might have guessed, it requires an internet connection to work.
There's no science in this like the world's most relaxing music, but it sure gets the job done without any fuss.
Doze (Free) | Google Play Store via XDA Developers Forum
French photographer Franck Bohbot's portfolio is filled with gorgeous, heartbreaking shots of ambitious movie palaces of yesteryear, as well as huge, vaulted swimming pools and other architectural marvels. He sells limited edition large-scale prints, but there's no sign of any art-books, which is a pity.
Read the rest
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.
Looking for the previous roundup editions? Find them here.
This week's roundup is brought to you by Passport Photo ID Studio from Handy Apps.
26 Best (And 1 WTF) New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (4/22/14 - 5/6/14) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.
Windows/Mac/Linux: YouTube's great for watching videos, but it's still not as easy as just flipping on a TV. Minitube makes that kind of experience happen, and pulls videos based on keywords into an endless stream.
All you need to do is search for something and Minitube automatically starts playing videos from YouTube for you. It uses keywords to match everything up and does a pretty good job of keeping you entertained without recycling videos. Besides that, Minitube also has a ton of different features for basic YouTube watching, including a Flash-free experience, channel subscriptions, and more. It's a bit pricey at $10, but you can check it out for free.
Minitube ($10) | via One Thing Well
Google Maps has been updated to include lane guidance, search result filters, and Uber integration. Also, high profile destinations now let you drop down to Street View to get up close and personal, save them for offline viewing, get access to easier directions, and get quick access to saved spot across multiple locations. Oh, and transit directions will show you how long you're going to be walking too.
This is a pretty beefy update to what is arguably one of Google's most important apps. Given, Google's done some fun goofy stuff with Maps like a Pokemon challenge, it's still hard to find a better online navigation experience. Have you been looking forward to any of these new features? What would you like to see in Google Maps for mobile?
Source: Google Lat Long
DuckDuckGo, the privacy-focused search engine full of useful shortcuts, just released a new beta interface focusing on smarter answers, easier access to image and video search, auto-suggest, and more.
Essentially, DuckDuckGo has redesigned their interface to better point out what it thinks you're trying to find—whether that be images, videos, places, or anything else. It also has quite a few customization options available through the new "hamburger" menu in the upper right-hand corner.
You can access the new version by heading to next.duckduckgo.com, which is currently in beta. DuckDuckGo says it's planning to roll this out over the next month, and that it currently still has a few issues—like a few settings that don't work and a few instant answers that still need fixing. But if you're a DuckDuckGo fan, it's definitely worth checking out.
DuckDuckGo Reimagined and Redesigned | DuckDuckGo Forum via Search Engine Land
Should you be travelling through the Eurotunnel today, you'll be able to enjoy mobile connectivity depending on which mobile operator you're currently subscribed to. Vodafone and EE have infrastructure in place to take loads from today, while O2 UK will be going live soon. Utilizing a fibre optic retransmission system, operators have made it possible for passengers to enjoy stable connectivity.
Five major internet service providers in the US and one in Europe have been accused of abusing their market share to interfere with the flow of the internet for end users. The accusations come from Level 3, a communications company that helps connect large-scale ISPs like Comcast or AT&T to the rest of the internet. According to the company, these six unnamed ISPs are deliberately degrading the quality of internet services using the Level 3 network, in an attempt to get Level 3 to pay them a fee for additional traffic caused by services like Netflix, a process known as paid peering.
Tesco will release a follow-up to its budget-centric Hudl tablet this year, the British supermarket giant's CEO has told BBC Radio 5 Live. Speaking with 5 Live's Wake Up To Money, Philip Clarke said the successor to last year's £119 slate will arrive in September, adding that the original had sold 550,000 units so far. This will be followed by a Hudl smartphone by the end of the year, Clarke said.
Every week we cover new Android apps with Fresh Meat on Wednesday, followed by Android Gaming on Thursday and Top 10 App Updates on Friday. When Monday rolls around, we look back to see which apps were the most appealing to our audience. Read on for the 10 most popular Android apps from last week.
App info: Motorola Boot Services is used to enhance your phone’s power-up experience. This application has been designed to work on Moto X and Moto G.
App info: Here is a set of 12 minimal widgets designed by La Barba and Richard Colon.
App info: Behang is a set of wallpapers created by knokfirst.
App info: Paper Theme provides a unique “paper” look to your icons. The app is updated weekly and includes Muzei Live Wallpaper support.
App info: wlpapR is a collection of wallpapers made for Android devices, all designed exclusively by user yackovsky. You can view and download them on the wlpapR website or with the app, which has Muzei support.
App info: Today Calendar is a more modern version of the stock Android calendar. Grey colors have been replaced with a clean white interface.
App info: The official Google Camera comes to Google Play with modes such as Photo Sphere, Lens Blur and Panorama.
App info: Beautiful, clean, flat, round and neat icon pack with a pastel palette of colors that makes Cryten very unique!
App info: Google Search app for Android: The fastest, easiest way to find what you need on the web and on your device.
App info: The Google Play Games app is the easiest way for you to discover new games, track achievements and scores, and play with friends around the world.
Note: To ensure that all apps receive a fair chance to make the list, we will retire any app that has made the list for 3 consecutive weeks and will place it in our Android and Me App Hall of Fame. We will post this Hall of Fame list in a dedicated series. Any app with * next to the title indicates it will now be added to our Hall of Fame list and will no longer be listed in this article.
Google Now is improving day-by-day with new back-end changes to bring new features, and the latest is local shopping results based on your search history. Building on a feature previously available through search that showed local stores in results for product searches, Google Now will now offer you a card showing when a nearby store has a product that you've been searching for.
Today Amazon introduced #AmazonCart, a new hashtag that lets Twitter users add potential purchases to their Amazon shopping cart with a tweet.
The new feature requires you to connect your Twitter account to Amazon. Then, when you see someone tweet out a link to an Amazon product, you can simply reply with the #AmazonCart hashtag (#AmazonBasket in the UK), and the linked product will appear in your online shopping cart.
Unfortunately, #AmazonCart doesn’t actually simplify the buying process. It’s mostly a way to bookmark an item you want to purchase later. You still have to log in to Amazon to complete the purchase; using the hashtag doesn't commit you to an impulse buy. And since Twitter is public, anyone can see what you’ve added to your shopping cart.
While this sort of deal might seem to bring Twitter one step closer to pulling in the e-commerce big bucks, the social network doesn’t actually make any money from sales that started with #AmazonCart, as Recode notes.
It's also not clear that similar deals have done much for Twitter in the past. American Express and Starbucks have both tried to get customers to use Twitter hashtags and spend money. Neither program has really taken off. While Starbucks boasted about $180,000 in sales in the first three months of the #tweetacoffee campaign, a cursory Twitter search shows just a handful of tweets in the last few weeks.
Image via Amazon
If McLaren's headquarters looks familiar, that'll be because its shape, appearance, and function echo those of supervillain lairs from the movies. Austere, pristinely clean surfaces are matched by an intricate temperature control system that keeps the whole place to within one degree of 22 Celsius. The other thing you don't notice, but realize as soon as you're informed, is that McLaren's Technology Centre is also completely odorless. Designed by the famed Foster + Partners architect firm and...
British operator EE's budget-centric "Kestrel" handset is now available on contract and Pay As You Go through the carrier's online and brick-and-mortar stores. Contract prices start at £13.99 per month, and on PAYG it costs just £99. Built by Huawei and heavily branded by EE, the Kestrel features a 4.5-inch qHD (960x540) display, a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 400 quad-core CPU, a 5-megapixel camera and 8GB of storage.
The post 35 Gorgeous Cityscape Photos to Inspire You appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
Struggling to come up with new ideas for cityscape photos? Looking for cityscape images to inspire your own photography? You’ve come to the right place.
In this article, I share 35 incredible photos of cities, featuring soaring skyscrapers, stunning skylines, incredible light trails, beautiful buildings, and more.
As you view the images, be sure to pay careful attention to the photographers’ masterful use of lighting, angles, and composition. And when you’re done reading, you can learn plenty more tips and tricks by reading our in-depth cityscape and architectural photography tutorials.
Without further ado, check out these incredible shots:
Well, there you have it:
35 incredible examples of cityscape photography, guaranteed to awe, inspire, and impress you with the beauty of the world’s cities.
So head out with your camera. Drive to the nearest city. And see if you can capture some gorgeous shots!
The post 35 Gorgeous Cityscape Photos to Inspire You appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.
My kids used to love math. Now it makes them cry. Thanks standardized testing and common core!
— Louis C.K. (@louisck) April 28, 2014
Louis CK is the latest high-profile voice to join the chorus against the US educational Common Core and the educational system's emphasis on standardized testing. A great New Yorker piece explores the movement against standardized testing and one-size-fits-all pedagogy.
I think it falls short of the mark, though. The rise of standardized testing, standardized curriculum, and "accountability" are part of the wider phenomenon of framing every question in business terms. In the modern world, the state is a kind of souped up business. That's why we're all "taxpayers" instead of "citizens." "Taxpayer" reframes policy outcomes as a kind of customer-loyalty perk. If your taxes are the locus of your relationship with the state, then people who don't pay taxes -- people too young, old, disabled, or unlucky to be working -- are not entitled to policy outcomes that reflect their needs.
"Taxpayers" are the shareholders in government. The government is the board of directors. School administrators are the management. Teachers are the assembly-line workers. Kids are the product. "Accountability" means that the product has to be quantified and reported on every quarter. The only readily quantifiable elements of education are attendance and test-scores, so the entire educational system is reorganized around maximizing these elements, even though they are only tangentially related to real educational outcomes and are trivial to game.
The vilification of teachers and teachers' unions go hand-in-hand with this idea. At the heart of teachers' unions' demands is the insistence that teaching is a craft that requires nonstandard, difficult-to-quantify approaches that are incompatible with factory-style "accountability." The emphasis on the outliers of teachers' unions -- the rare instances in which bad teachers are protected by their trade unions -- instead of the activity that constitutes the vast majority of union advocacy -- demanding an educational approach that is grounded in trust, respect, and individual tutelage -- the "taxpayer" types can make out teachers as lazy slobs who don't want to jog on the same brutal treadmill as the rest of us.
Some observers, among them Arne Duncan, the Education Secretary, have been quick to dismiss parental critiques of education policy as whining. Duncan may have apologized for sneering about “white suburban moms” who find that after exposure to the Common Core “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were,” but that he expressed the thought in the first place is telling. It’s easy to make fun of privileged parents who can see no fault in their charmed offspring; one can even imagine Louis C.K. doing it.
But the issue identified by Louis C.K., and by other less well-known but equally furious parents, is not that the material children are expected to learn is too hard. It isn’t unreasonable to expect kids to have learned to multiply and divide numbers up to a hundred by the time they leave third grade—and in all likelihood, Louis C.K.’s child will have done so by June, if she hasn’t already, and be the better for it. The greater problem lies with the ways in which the achievement of those standards is measured. An emphasis on a certain kind of testing has become a blight upon the city’s classrooms. “The teachers are great,” C.K. tweeted. “But it’s changed in recent years. It’s all about these tests. It feels like a dark time.”
Louis C.K. Against the Common Core [Rebecca Mead/New Yorker]
(via Kottke) 
Welcome back to Android Gaming Weekly, our weekly recap of new game releases. We still plan to cover upcoming releases and games we’re playing, but this column is dedicated to new games that you can start playing right now. Check out our top picks and let us know in the comments section if you have any suggestions for next week’s post.
Description: Warhammer 40,000: Storm of Vengeance is a lane strategy game for PC and mobile devices set in the dark, gothic universe of Warhammer 40,000.
Storm of Vengeance tells the story of a pivotal moment in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, during the legendary planetary conflict on Piscina IV.
Description: Dethroned! A strat ’em up multiplayer game with celestial fairytale combat! Dethroned! is an action RTS where you command a hero, gather a scruffy band of soldiers, construct defenses and attack your opponent with unstoppable force! Choose a side, select a hero and head into the battle!
Description: Rev up your engines and get ready to experience soccer like never before! Smash, shoot and score your way to victory. Drive to glory through 20 challenging tournaments, featuring different balls from a Soccer ball all the way to a Tennis, Beach ball and Hockey Puck.
Description: You are an elite sniper who brings death from afar. You are sent in to take out the bad guys and help your people on the ground. Clear the path for them, bearing your own safety in mind.
Description: FLASHOUT 2, the sequel to the highly-acclaimed anti-gravity racer FLASHOUT 3D is finally here! Get into one of many ultra-fast ships and use your arsenal of rockets, guns, bonuses and upgrades to fight your way to victory!
Description: Mighty, powerful and forgotten – You, one of the greatest rulers of the ancient world. Now… Awoken. Your eternal peace has been disturbed, godless thieves are trying to lay their hands on your gold. You can’t let that happen, Almighty.
Description: Braveland is a turn-based game inspired by old-school strategies. You start as a humble warrior’s son whose village was cruelly raided by bandits and use your wits and skill to become a commander of your own army. The game story takes place in a carefully drawn colorful world, which the path of your hero will go through.
Description: VoidGhost is a full 3D world, high speed, space dogfighting game. While navigating toward a rendezvous point on an interstellar raiding mission, your hyper-engine failed. You are trapped in a void. Use your homing missiles and aim your rapid fire plasma burster rounds to engage targets. Destroy the stasis spheres to release alien ships.
Description: A battle/puzzle game with monsters so epic that you’ll forget you’re still in the bathroom. You’re a busy hero. You have dragons to rescue and princesses to defeat. Or is it the other way around? Join the other players in a race to the fire-erupting, skull-faced volcano lair at the top of the world map. It’s called Mount Death Dread Doom Skull. Within it, you will find the ultimate prize.
Description: The story features a group of characters who on the surface have nothing in common, heading to Raglis, far away in the west. The group is made up of demons, humans, and half-demons, all with their own objectives, and in the group is a young woman known as ‘the savior’, whose a mysterious power has awoken…
Not only was there a generous array of fine Android apps to grace the Play Store over the last 30 days, we've got some awesome Android games launching in April too. There's a healthy mix of action, strategy, and casual this go-around, but regardless of genre, these are all some truly outstanding titles. Our top five picks are below, so dig in - if you think you're ready.
Foursquare is planning to split its core app into two separate experiences, one that provides recommendations and another that acts as a “social heat map” where users check in and see nearby friends. The new app is called Swarm, and it is not yet available, though according to Dennis Crowley, the app takes a lot of inspiration from the Instant Messenger, where you can see when your… Read More
Following a somewhat staggered rollout across some UK mobile operators, independent retailer Phones 4u has today launched Sony's early 2014 flagship, the Xperia Z2. The 5.2-inch rectangular behemoth costs around £540-550 outright. It's also available on contracts from Vodafone and EE through Phones 4u, for £37.99 per month and £49 upfront (for this weekend only), and on EE, Orange, T-Mobile, O2 and Vodafone through the Carphone Warehouse, with prices for a free Z2 starting at £42 per month.
Syfy announced that a new television drama series based upon Lev Grossman's acclaimed The Magicians is in development. Comparable to a grown-up Harry Potter universe laced with sex and drugs, The Magicians pivots around a group of New York-based twenty-year-olds embroiled in a world where magic exists. Sera Gamble, former Supernatural showrunner, and In Plain Sight's John McNamara will be the writers for the show which will consist of hour-long episodes. They will also serve as executive producers alongside Michael London who optioned Grossman's first novel.
Swiss-Hungarian startup Tresorit is a cloud-storage solution it claims one-ups the likes of Dropbox and Box in terms of security and privacy because it employs end-to-end encryption, meaning that you -- and only you -- have access to the "keys" needed to access your files. And, according to the company, without losing the convenience of being able to collaborate and share with others. Read More
Not unlike Phil's Atlantean hometown, you may need a bucket to deal with April's deluge of high-quality of Android app releases. Lucky for you, we've wrung out the Play Store for our top five picks. There are quite a few big names this go-around, including some apps straight from Google. Ready? Let's dive in.
A new update to the Google Play Music app for Android is rolling out this morning with a couple of new playlist-related features. Update to the new Play Music version 5.5.1509O adds the ability to edit and share your playlists from directly within the app, two things users were previously only able to through the web interface. After updating you'll find both options in the overflow menu next to each playlist.
New apps need lovin’ too, right? Every day there are thousands of additions to the Google Play Store, but many go unnoticed and never receive the attention they deserve. We’ve shown in the past that this community can discover great apps and propel them to new heights. Our weekly Fresh Meat column highlights new apps with fewer than 100,000 installs. Browse our new Android app picks below and let us know which ones you enjoy.
Description: At Babylon we are working towards a future where everyone has easy access to high quality, affordable healthcare. We are building the world’s first integrated digital healthcare system combining the latest advances in technology with modern medicine.
Description: Put the internet to work for you. IFTTT lets you create powerful connections with one simple statement — if this then that. Activate your Channels and create Recipes on IFTTT! Channels are services like Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, as well as devices like Philips Hue, Belkin WeMo, and UP by Jawbone.
Description: Did you know the average person unlocks their phone over 150 times a day? Imagine if every time you unlocked your phone you could study a new GRE or SAT vocabulary word! Unlock your phone -> Answer a GRE / SAT Vocab Question -> Learn a new word ( English words only)
Description: The official Radio Disney App! Listen to Radio Disney 24/7 to hear the latest music from artists such as One Direction, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and more!
Description: Experience a new dimension of the calendar: Your UpTo calendar has two layers. The front layer is your existing calendar. The back layer includes calendars you follow based on your location, likes and interests. Expand your calendar to reveal the back layer of events with just a pinch or tap.
Description: Samsung Home Monitor is an application that you can use with the baby monitoring feature found on the latest Samsung Smart Cameras. The Baby Monitoring feature can be used with a smartphone that is connected to the same access point as a Samsung Smart Camera. It can notify you when noise is detected and allows for live monitoring of streamed video.
Description: Let the object in focus stand out. The Background defocus app simulates a shallow depth of field by creating a blurred out background. It captures two photos with different focus settings, which you can bring together to create a photo with one object in sharp focus, against a beautifully blurred background.
Description: Moving Curtains Curtain Design App is the perfect tool to help you visually manage your curtain design project. This new and exciting design tool will enable you to: SNAP: Take a picture of your window using the integrated camera function PLAY: Design your curtains using the many features available, including a choice of curtains, blinds, swags, pelmets and tie backs, etc. Once you have the basic shape and style of your curtains you can play with the colours using the integrated colour picker.
Description: Yahoo Screen is the exclusive home for all clips from the SNL archives. Catch highlights of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Tosh.0 and South Park. Enjoy Yahoo Originals and videos from Buzzfeed, New York Times and The Onion.
Description: The simplest way to get free and cheap stuff locally. Snaply works with Freegle, the UK’s biggest “freecycle/freecycling” platform.
Snaply is in Beta, meaning we’re testing it out.
Android/iOS: Not to be outdone by Microsoft Office on the iPad, Google has announced new dedicated mobile apps for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. They work offline and get you to your files more quickly.
When you open one of these apps, your most recently edited files will be shown, saving you the hassle of digging through Drive for them.
Docs and Sheets are available now in Google Play and the iTunes App Store, with Slides coming soon. You can read more at Google's official blog, but that's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Docs (Free) in Google Play and iTunes App Store | via TechCrunch
Sheets (Free) in Google Play and iTunes App Store
Sunnycomb, the app that tries to predict how each day's weather will make you feel, is now available on Android. Though there are already plenty of well-known weather apps on the market, including popular ones from Yahoo and the Weather Channel, Sunnycomb benefits from its connection to Weathernews Inc (WIN), one of Japan's top weather apps with over 20 million downloads. Read More
Sad news to report this afternoon: veteran British actor Bob Hoskins has died, aged 71. His agent said Hoskins died of pneumonia in hospital on Tuesday. He announced his retirement from acting in 2012 after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Born in 1942, Hoskins’ career spanned 40 years. It started with various TV roles – including one in Dennis Potter’s Pennies From Heaven – and ended with recent supporting parts in Snow White And The Huntsman and Made In Dagenham.
Arguably his most respected turn was his breakthrough role as Harold Shand in The Long Good Friday, for which he was widely and deservedly praised. In 1986 his brusque-but-tender turn as a call girl's confidant in Neil Jordan's Mona Lisa earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. After that, he took parts in films as diverse as Brazil, Nixon, Neverland and Spice World. His take on Smee was a scallyish highlight of Steven Spielberg's Hook.
Hoskins, however, was best known to generations of youngsters for playing the lead role (along with his cartoon co-star) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988. The groundbreaking live-action / animation hybrid wasn’t straightforward to film, and afterwards Hoskins began to believe that his co-stars were real. “I had learnt how to hallucinate," he remembered. "If you do that for eight months it becomes hard to get rid of.”
With his gruff voice and stocky appearance, Hoskins was a beloved character actor for Hollywood, in demand with directors such as Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone (he played J. Edgar Hoover in Nixon) and Robert Zemeckis (as well as Roger Rabbit, he appeared in Zemeckis’s A Christmas Carol in 2012). But as Empire readers revealed when he retired in 2012, the honour roll of Hoskins favourites is long and glorious.
Following the announcement, his family released the following statement: “Bob died peacefully at hospital last night surrounded by family, following a bout of pneumonia. We ask that you respect our privacy during this time and thank-you for your messages of love and support.”
He is survived by his wife Linda, and his children Alex, Sarah, Rosa and Jack.
