New apps need lovin’ too, right? Every day there are thousands of new entries on 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 launch them to new heights. Our weekly column Fresh Meat highlights new apps with less than 100k installs. Browse our new Android app picks below and let us know which ones you enjoy.

Dynamic Keyboard

Description: Using machine learning technologies and artificial intelligence algorithms, I have been able to create a database of intelligence that helps modify the keys’ visibility and size depending upon the likelihood of that letter.

Autodesk FormIt

Description: Autodesk® FormIt helps you capture building design concepts digitally anytime, anywhere ideas strike. Use real-world site information to help create forms in context and support early design decisions with real building data.

Wickr Self-Destruct Messaging

Description: Send self-destructing messages for free to other Wickr users anywhere in the world while leaving no trace. Send and receive text, photos, videos and voice messages that are:
- CONTROLLED – Sender decides who sees what, where and for how long.
- SECURE – Military-grade encryption (AES256,ECDH521,RSA4096 TLS), we do not have the keys.
- PRIVATE – Not shared with strangers; deletes metadata (location, time, identification and edits).

FlashFox

Description: FlashFox is the free mobile web browser that puts the power of the open and complete web in your hands. Enjoy Flash videos, live sports, news and play tons of interactive Flash games and content just like being on a desktop browser!

NetLive

Description: NetLive allows you to monitor your internet data transfer rate while also showing the app that is using the most data at the current moment. It runs both in the notification drawer or as a widget, so you always have access to your transfer rate information.

Learnist

Description: Learnist for Android smartphones and tablets makes learning from experts fast and easy by remixing anything on the web like videos, ebooks, maps, blogs, podcasts, surveys and more into simple and elegant learning resources on any topic.

My Calc

Description:  Powerful and easy-to-use calculator capable of solving your operations quickly and easily. This app includes: scientific calculator, standard calculator, tip calculator and percent calculator, which can be accessed from the menu.

LG G2 Emulator

Description: With LG G2 Emulator application, you can experience the highly excellent LG G2 functions like on the real LG G2. In addition, you can participate in the event when you get the 6 coupons by completing the 6 features of LG G2. You can win prizes such as LG G2 through a lucky draw.

Today

Description: Today is a minimal, transparent agenda widget for Android. Today syncs with your Google Calendar to show your upcoming events in a beautiful list, on both your home screen and your lock screen.

AutoLaunch

Description:  Launch apps in Tasker dynamically with AutoLaunch. Also, query your apps and act on them! You can use Tasker variables to do this, so this makes it possible to launch apps by voice commands.

The crowded cross-platform messaging space is about to get a bit more crowded. Industry watchers have repeatedly said that BlackBerry's efforts to bring BBM to Android and iOS are far too little, too late to matter now that a handful of behemoths dominate the space. While that may or may not be true, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is definitely a healthy amount of buzz surrounding the imminent release of BlackBerry's famous messaging service on Google and Apple's mobile platforms. And now, we have some potential good news for those eager to try out the new app — according to a new report, BBM will launch for both Android and iOS later this week.

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Feedly, a service making claims to the RSS reader throne Google abandoned by shutting down Google Reader, announced today that it’s now opening up its API to all interested developers building RSS-based applications. This is a notable step toward Feedly’s goal of not just being another feed-reading application itself, but rather a platform which will allow an app ecosystem to thrive.

Though to Google, a service like Google Reader with maybe tens of millions of users had only “niche” appeal compared with the size and scale of its other online properties like Gmail, Search, YouTube, and Google+, the Google Reader app had powered a large community of feed reading applications by way of its API – an industry that could have gone under thanks to the Google Reader shutdown without alternative APIs, like Feedly’s, being made available.

Feedly was one of the first companies to have offered an API to third parties early on, allowing developers to focus on building differentiated user experiences and feature sets, rather than the core infrastructure that goes along with offering a news-reading application.

Initially, the company announced partnerships with RSS app makers Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify and gReader in June, ahead of the introduction of “Feedly Cloud,” a backend that can power other third-party applications, including those beyond simple news readers. At the time of Cloud’s launch, Feedly said it was also working with  IFTTT, Sprout Social, gNewsReader for BlackBerry 10 and Symbian/MeeGo, Press, Pure News Widget, and Meneré, and planned to have more developers joining in the weeks ahead.

Now having been in testing for over six months, the company says its API is today being utilized by fifty developers so far, who have built news readers, vertical enterprise applications, dashboards, integration hubs, vertical communities, and more. Newly launched Reeder 2, an iPad-optimized revamp of the popular Reeder app, is among the newcomers.

The Feedly API provides developers with access to millions of feeds, and a personalization graph which end users define through their subscriptions, tags, and categories they use in their own feed reading applications.

More info on the new Feedly API is available on developer.feedly.com.

Microsoft revealed its ambitious plans earlier this year to offer interactive video content with the Xbox One. A live-action Halo TV series is one of the first examples of Microsoft's promised efforts, but the company appears to be working on a lot more. In an interview with Bloomberg, Microsoft Studios vice president Phil Spencer has revealed that the Xbox maker has "literally hundreds of ideas" for shows that they're incubating at the moment.

Details of the Xbox TV shows have been lacking so far, but Spencer says Microsoft "will have some new announcement for TV shows coming pretty soon." In a separate interview with Reuters, he calls the new TV shows "Nancy projects" as a reference to Nancy Tellem, the former CBS executive who now...

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An official port of the wildly popular Transport Tycoon PC title is blazing towards Android full steam ahead. The game, which is being designed and directed by original creator Chris Sawyer, is set to launch in just two weeks. Sawyer's company and development partner Origin8 have announced that the title will launch on mobile devices on October 3rd.

 

If the graphics in the screenshots above don't exactly get you excited, that's because this is a port of a game that first launched nearly two decades ago, and the developers haven't done much to pretty things up.

• Official Transport Tycoon Port Coming To Android, Directed By Creator Chris Sawyer Himself
• OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe) Ported To Android, Available In Market
• Linux Tycoon, "The Nerdiest MMO Ever Conceived," Headed To Android With Online Play
• First Gameplay Trailer Of Gameloft's Wild Blood Released, Coming To Android "Very Soon"

Touch-Friendly Official Transport Tycoon Port For Android On Track To Launch October 3rd was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Deals, accessories, support and feature guides for Samsung phones

Samsung UK has today launched "My Galaxy," a new app for its Android-powered smartphones. The app incorporates user guides for popular Galaxy phone features, official "news" from the company's social media channels, a built-in Samsung accessory store and offers exclusive to owners of Samsung devices. There's also an on-device assistant feature for troubleshooting.

To get started with "My Galaxy," you'll need to cough up some personal details through the email sign-up process (not currently working, as far as we can tell) or sign in through Facebook. The app is at least well-designed, and seems to broadly abide by Google's Android design guidelines — though you'll want to double-check the "Settings" pane to make sure you're not pestered by unwanted notifications.

The "My Galaxy" app is available now on Google Play for Galaxy S2, S3, S4, Note, Note 2, S3 Mini and Galaxy Fame users, and Samsung says it'll be preloaded on upcoming handsets sold in the UK.

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'My EE' app gets much-needed redesign

UK mobile network EE has debuted a new, redesigned Android app today, with the goal of making it easier for customers to view allowances and manage their accounts and usage. There's a new, more attractive layout, with prominent placement given to key info like remaining data, billing info and active add-ons. A new side-loaded settings menu also provides quick access to all the various areas of the app.

The new app is available now from Google Play, and can be used by EE, Orange and T-Mobile UK customers. Hit the link above to grab the new app. If you were already using the old EE Android app, you'll get the new one as an update.

Today also sees the launch of new apps for iOS, Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10.

Android: Disa is a messaging app that aims to pull all of your IMs, texts, picture and video messages, and other chats into one good-looking interface that's fast and easily accessible. It's in beta right now and has some drawbacks, but it's looking good so far.

I've been using Disa for a few days. The interface is clean, the app is fast, and SMS and MMS blend beautifully with WhatsApp messages. Similarly, there's no shortage of settings and options to keep your messages organized the way you want them. You can toggle emoji, switch services quickly without starting a new message, and so on. You can read more about the app's features in this FAQ.

In a way, Disa is what we'd like Hangouts to grow into. One interface for the messages I send friends, the photos I snap and fire off to them, but also one place to see the SMS and MMS messages that go through my carrier and are sent right to my phone number. Right now Disa supports SMS/MMS and WhatsApp, one of your favorite alternative texting apps, but the developers are working on adding more messaging services as soon as possible, specifically Hangouts and Facebook Messenger.

To give the app a try, you'll need to first join the Disa.fm Google+ Community, so you can stay up to date on improvements, report bugs, and offer your feedback on the app's development. Then, you can join the testing group here, while you're logged in to the Google account you use to install Android apps. Finally, once you're in the testing group, you'll be able to download the app from Google Play here. You must join the testing group at least before you can download the app though.

Disa.im | via Droid Life

Firefox: Extensions are a great way to augment your browser experience. They're also a great way to balloon your RAM usage if you're not careful. Here's how to find out which one is grinding your system to a halt.

As of version 24, Firefox has the ability to see exactly how much memory each extension is taking up without installing yet more add-ons to analyze their usage:

1. Navigate to about:support.
2. Copy the ID of an extension you want to check.
3. Navigate to about:memory.
4. Click "Measure" under "Show memory reports."
5. Press Ctrl-F and paste the extension ID.

This should show you exactly how much memory a particular extension is using up. It's not the most intuitive thing in the world, but if you're having a problem with a particular extension and aren't sure which, it's a simple way to find out.

Firefox 24: find out how much memory add-ons use | Ghacks

On Monday, scientists across Canada demonstrated against the Conservative government's war on science. The Stephen Harper government has imposed political minders on scientists, requiring routine press queries to be vetted by unqualified political operatives, many of them 20-something Conservative party fundraisers without any background in science. The Harper government has taken many other unprecedented, anti-science measures, from demanding NDAs from foreign scientists working on projects in Canada to shutting down the Experimental Lakes Area, the Canadian equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider, a massive lake-system used for crucial large-scale climate research.

The Tories raised their election war-chests from tar-sands oil companies and other dirty industries, and have spent their time in government trying to abolish facts from political discourse. Canada's world-class research community had been crying foul all along, but this appears to be the breaking point.

Hundreds of participants gathered in 17 cities for rallies on Monday. In Toronto some donned lab coats while in Vancouver protesters were seen wearing gags adorned with the Conservative Party logo – a reference to the alleged muzzling of federal scientists by political overseers.

“We’re really pleased with the turnout,” said Katie Gibbs, a biologist and executive director of Evidence for Democracy, the Ottawa-based science advocacy group that co-ordinated the effort.

Dr. Gibbs and colleagues said they hoped the rallies would alert the public to scientists’ concerns that the federal government has shifted funding markedly toward commercially driven research at the expense of public-interest science.

Scientists push campaign for evidence-based decision making from government [Ivan Semeniuk/Globe and Mail]

(via /.)

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), America’s super-secret spy court, has finally revealed the legal justification for the National Security Agency’s phone record dragnet program. According to the decision, judges had declared that every single call record was relevant to the fight against terrorism, and thus legal for spy agencies to collect en masse. Perhaps most importantly, telecommunications companies never challenged the NSA’s authority to collect the data.

FISC  Judge Clair Eagan explained why the NSA could collect phone records (meta data) under section 215 of the The Patriot Act: “Because it is necessary to obtain the bulk collection of a telephone company’s metadata to determine those connections between known and unknown international terrorist operatives as part of authorized investigations, the production of the information sought meets the standard for relevance under Section 215.”

Specifically, the court relied on a 1976 case, Smith v. Maryland, which held that because callers use a third party (a telephone company) to transmit their signal, they cannot expect total privacy. Additionally, the government is not “searching” the number specifically, only collecting it in bulk.

“The Supreme Court conclude that a person does not have a legitimate expectation of privacy in telephone numbers dialed, and there, when the government obtained that dialing information, it ‘was not a ‘search,’ and no warrant was required,” she explained.

Perhaps even more important, none of the telephone companies opposed the ruling. “To this date, no holder of records who has received an Order to produce bulk telephony metadata has challenged the legality of such an Order,” explains the ruling. “Indeed, no recipient of any Section 215 Order has challenged the legality of such an Order, despite the explicit statutory mechanism for doing so.”

No shocker, civil rights groups are outraged. “It’s disappointing that the telecoms did not stand up for their users,” Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer, Kurt Ospahl, told Wired.

President Obama has promised significant reforms to the NSA surveillance practices and is awaiting recommendations from an independent task group. Any reforms will likely wait until the group has submitted its findings.

[Image Credit: Flickr User Steakpinball]

YouTube has announced that it will launch a new feature on its mobile apps enabling viewers to watch videos even when they are offline. The new update will be available in November.

The feature will let viewers add videos to their devices to store and watch for a short period of time when they are not connected to the Internet, “so your fans’ ability to enjoy your videos no longer has to be interrupted by something as commonplace as a morning commute,” according to YouTube’s Creator & Partners blog.

This is a notable development because downloading videos is currently against YouTube’s rules, though there are plenty of third-party apps and browser extensions designed to let people do so.

People who currently want to download YouTube videos to watch later have to rely on third-party () apps and browser extensions. (downloading video is against YouTube’s terms of service). In June 2012, however, YouTube began experimenting with offline viewing by allowing users to watch precached videos in an update to its Android app . YouTube distinguishes between that feature and total downloading of videos by requiring viewers to watch at least the first second of the video while they are online.

Enabling viewers to watch videos offline is the latest of several updates YouTube has released over the past few months to increase engagement on its mobile apps. In August, for example, it made it possible for people to browse explore video recommendations even while one was already streaming, more closely replicating the viewing experience on YouTube’s Web site. These new features also make it more likely that viewers will use YouTube’s mobile apps with their smart TV systems, including Google’s own Chromecast.

FutureLearn, a U.K.-led MOOCs alliance, has launched its first set of free courses, nine months after announcing its intention to jump into the Massively Open Online Courses space.

FutureLearn has grown in size and scope during that pre-launch phase. It now describes itself as “U.K.-led” MOOCs provider — having added a couple of international higher education institutions (namely Trinity College Dublin and Australia’s Monash University) to a list that began as a consortium of U.K.-only institutions.

The thing is, FutureLearn is late to the MOOCs party — playing catch up with the likes of Coursera and Udacity, to name just two of the U.S.-based pioneers in the space. So expanding its roster of course-providing institutions by casting its net overseas is one way to scale faster and start attracting a critical mass of students so it can shoot for profitability, down the line.

The full list of (26) institutions now signed up to create courses for FutureLearn is as follows: the Universities of Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, East Anglia, Edinburgh, Exeter, Glasgow, Leicester, Loughborough, Kings College London, Lancaster, Leeds, Monash, Nottingham, Queen’s Belfast, Reading, Sheffield, Southampton, Strathclyde, Trinity College Dublin and Warwick.

Long time U.K. distance-learning institution The Open University is also a key player — indeed, it wholly owns FutureLearn. Plus the British Council, British Library and the British Museum have agreed to partner with the MOOC provider to “share content and expertise and collaborate in the development of courses through FutureLearn.com“.

FutureLearn’s website is launching today as an open beta which will run until early 2014. Learners can sign up for courses via the site, and their feedback will be used to shape its ongoing development, the consortium said today.

Pilot courses are being offered by 20 of FutureLearn’s partners initially, including eight courses scheduled to begin between October and December this year. Courses in the initial batch include:

• Begin Programming: Build Your First Mobile Game, from Reading University
• Web Science: How the Web is Changing the World, from Southampton University
• The Mind Is Flat: The Shocking Shallowness of Human Psychology, from Warwick University

To date, learners from more than 165 countries have registered interest in taking a course on FutureLearn.

BlackBerry has confirmed earlier rumours that it was flirting with building a phablet and quietly taken the wraps off its biggest phone yet: the all-touch BlackBerry Z30 packs a 5-inch Super AMOLED display, which puts it on the cusp of phablet territory and a step up on the the screen real estate offered by its previous all-touch flagship, the 4.2 inch Z10.

BlackBerry is describing the Z30 as the “fastest and most advanced” phone in its portfolio — with a 1.7 GHz processor plus quad-core graphics (vs the Z10′s dual-core 1.5 GHz chip), a 2880 mAh battery (the largest cell it’s ever put in a phone) and an improved antenna designed to boost reception in low-signal areas.

It’s not a huge BB10 OS portfolio, though, with the Z30 becoming just the fourth device in BlackBerry’s next-gen range — after the all-touch Z10, the QWERTY-packing Q10 and the mid-range Q5. Sales of BB10 devices have not been huge either — with the company shipping just 2.7 million BB10 handsets in Q1. Adding a phablet — a niche, flagship device — to its playbook at this point is not an obvious choice to try to amp up sales. Arguably an attractively priced mid-tier all-rounder with the potential to ship in very high volumes would have been a better bet.

Instead, BlackBerry appears to be going back to its businessy roots by aiming the Z30 at enterprise users.  ”The [Z30] is designed for people looking for a smartphone that excels at communications, messaging and productivity. Having apps like the full Documents To Go suite that comes preinstalled, together with its 5″ touch display, the BlackBerry Z30 smartphone gives you a best in class productivity experience on the go,” said Carlo Chiarello, Executive Vice President for Products at BlackBerry, in a statement.

As well as its big screen and beefy battery, the Z30 stands out from its fellows for being the first device running BlackBerry OS 10.2 — the latest version of the OS which won’t be pushed out to the Z10, Q10 and Q5 til mid-October at the earliest (carrier foot-dragging may well drag that timeframe out).

Updates in BB10.2 include a new Priority Hub feature which sounds a bit like Gmail’s Priority Inbox feature, by learning which conversations and people are important to you to foreground their messages and notifications, along with a new pan-app message preview feature that lets users view a message preview in any app and reply without leaving the app if they wish. The preview feature also extends to the lock screen where users can tap to view recent messages and notifications.

Other tweaks in 10.2 include improvements to the audio of BBM Voice and BBM Video chats — to make them sound “more natural and realistic” — and battery enhancements. The Z30 apparently supports up to 25 hours of “mixed use”.

BlackBerry said the Z30 will go on sale, beginning next week, in the U.K. and Middle East, with “all other regions” getting the device during the holiday season. Pricing and specific availability by market is tbc.

Of all the days in the year to choose to launch a new flagship phone, the morning after Apple’s iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c reviews embargo lifts seems an odd choice. It’s almost as if BlackBerry has given up trying. Or that this phone was designed before company priorities crystalised around “strategic alternatives” — like seeking a buyer for its business.

The Z30′s low-key launch feels like BlackBerry going through the motions of being a handset maker, while it tries to find someone else to take on its handset-making business. And if that’s the case, a phablet is fittingly large enough to accommodate an epitaph should another veteran smartphone maker make an exit from the fiercely competitive phone-making business.

Doubleclick co-founder Kevin O'Connor's new business is a company called Find the Best, and it's attracted a legal threat from a patent troll called Lumen View, who assert a patent over "multilateral decision making" (it appears they've collected some big paydays from various dating and job-finding sites with this one). Rather than settle, O'Connor's pledged $1M of his own money to fight the patent, and has filed a countersuit alleging that Lumen View violates the RICO organized crime statute.

In response, Lumen has sent a threat to O'Connor, saying that calling them patent trolls is a "hate crime" ("I didn't know patent trolls were a protected class" - O'Connor) and threatening to seek criminal charges if O'Connor doesn't pay them a bunch of money and apologize.

FindTheBest's RICO lawsuit uses language like "extortion" to describe Lumen View's business practices.

The suit has several tacks. First, it claims that FTB couldn't possibly infringe a patent that clearly describes two or more people entering a preference—FindTheBest's system only handles the preference of one user at a time.

In fact, Lumen didn't do "any meaningful pre-filing investigation," the suit alleges, and that's part of the problem. Lumen simply did "a broad internet search for companies that offer any type of matching service... Because the concept of matching two parties is as old as Adam and Eve, this general search reveals numerous company websites." The company's expert witness not only hadn't investigated FindTheBest's services—he'd never heard of the target company, according to O'Connor.

The threat letter is also full of barely veiled threats that Lumen will make the lawsuit as expensive as possible. In fact, the majority of the letter describes how the defendant company must take drastic steps to collect all its electronic and other documents now that it has been sued—if it doesn't, sanctions may occur, says Lumen.

FindTheBest also argues that Lumen's attorney made the claim that calling someone a "patent troll" was actually a "hate crime" under “Ninth Circuit precedent." After O'Connor contacted Shapiro, Lumen View attorney Wasserbauer threatened to file criminal charges—unless FindTheBest settled the civil case immediately, apologized, and gave financial compensation to Shapiro. The offer was "good until close of business that day," Wasserbauer allegedly said.

Angry entrepreneur replies to patent troll with racketeering lawsuit [Joe Mullin/Ars Technica]

Nine new countries now have access to the latest Nexus 7 with mobile data connectivity

Update: Although Google didn't make a note of it, the Nexus 7 LTE has also gone on sale in Italy today.

Original Story: International Android fans rejoice, the Nexus 7 LTE is expanding its availability to several more countries starting today. Adding to the list of available countries just a handful of days after it went on sale in the US, Google Play is now selling the mobile data-enabled Nexus 7 in Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, UK, Japan and Korea.

Pricing will naturally vary across the countries, but we see the UK pricing pegged at £299 for the 32GB model with shipping of 1-2 days. We're also seeing O2 in the UK follow up on its previous statements and offering the Nexus 7 LTE directly as well.

Source: +Nexus; O2 UK

The new video report from Ooyala gives us a glimpse of how rapidly the American consumer's habits are changing. As broadcast television continues its slow disintegration, consumers are increasing their video consumption on smartphones and tablets with ferocious speed. Time spent on watching videos on tablets increased by a massive 59% during the first half of 2013. Interestingly, the peak period for staring at iPads is now Friday night. Broadcast behemoths like ABC, NBC and CBS abandoned Fridays years ago, opting to dump dying shows into Friday night time slots and focus their efforts on the first four days of the week. This has evidently started backfiring as consumers are turning Fridays into tablet video nights. This will no doubt erode Friday audiences of major channels even further, accelerating the downward spiral of big broadcasters.

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It has only been a few months since Asus announced the original PadFone Infinity, but the new version of the phone-tablet hybrid was just outed in Taiwan. This is a spec bump on the last PadFone, which moves from Snapdragon 600 to 800, but that's not all.

Just like the last PadFone, this one has a 5-inch 1080p screen, which is upped to a 10-inch display at the same resolution when the phone is in the tablet dock.

• [MWC 2013] ASUS Announces The 1080p, Snapdragon 600 Padfone Infinity And 7" Fonepad
• [MWC 2012] ASUS Details Padfone Specs, Crams A Snapdragon S4 Inside Your Phone, Inside Your Tablet
• [Deal Alert] Woot Has The ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity TF700T Tablet For $370 + $5 Shipping
• [MWC 2013] Hands-On (Video) With The ASUS Padfone Infinity And Fonepad

Asus Reveals Updated PadFone Infinity – Snapdragon 800, 5/10.1-Inch 1080p Screen, MicroSD Slot, And Android 4.2 was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Etsy, the marketplace for hand crafted goods, is adding a new feature today to engage brands with the its platform-—Pages. The feature allows brands to create curated pages of items from Etsy, which users can buy directly from the marketplace.

Etsy, which currently lists 18 million items for sale and is seeing 60 million unique visitors each month, joining forces with curation partners tastemakers like Apartment Therapy, Lucky, West Elm, Martha Stewart Weddings, Swiss Miss, Food52, and Babble to add pages to a designated section of the marketplace to see recommended products from these brands.

You can actually follow these brands to get personalized recommendations for products to discover as well.

For example, West Elm has created a number of Pages dedicated to items made from artisans from particular cities. In the New York page, West Elm features a number of “finds” from Etsy shops based in the region. Brands can also embed these Pages with a few lines of code on their own sites.

Currently Etsy buyers can create their own collections by adding your favorite items to a page. But this new feature is really more of a way to allow brands, both in retail and editorial, to create a more personalized and engaged experience around some of the items featured on Etsy. It’s a win for Etsy merchants because they could possibly get more exposure when listed by a brand.

This isn’t the first time Etsy has been engaging larger brands to expose the work of their artisans. The New York-based company recently partnered with Nordstrom to feature a collection of wedding-themed handmade and vintage goods from emerging artists and designers on Etsy.

BitTorrent Inc., the San Francisco-based technology and media company behind one of the most popular file-sharing services, has partnered with Madonna to release a 17-minute film. The message, which Madonna says is about art, freedom, and love, may be less interesting than the medium. Madonna's latest project will be packaged as a BitTorrent Bundle, the gated file format that allows artists to ask for email addresses or payment before allowing people to download their content.

The company has successfully partnered with several A-list creators, some from within the established entertainment industry that has fought so hard against the music file sharing in which BitTorrent has its roots. Bestselling author Tim Ferriss released some...

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Google just announced a brand new Wallet app that's open to all Android users. It allows you to manage your Wallet balance, send money to friends, manage your rewards cards, and get offers all in one place. Read more here.

This stunning video of the Moon's rotation was made from images captured by NASA's Lunar Reconissance Orbiter's Wide Angle Camera (WAC). "A Unique View of the Moon" (Arizona State University)

In this video from the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), Louis of BHQF teaches you how to silkscreen, right in your bathroom.

A simple universal dock with a few neat features seeks crowd funding

Well-made and nice-looking universal docks that work with a variety of devices are hard to come by, and the folks at FUZ Designs are hoping to solve that problem with a Kickstarter campaign to make the EverDock. The goal of EverDock is to provide a single docking solution that can work with any phone or tablet by providing a basic stand that can incorporate with any cord and connector of your choice.

The dock, which is made out of solid aluminum, has a channel underneath that can accommodate any plug, including standard MicroUSB, Apple Lightning or 30-pin and other similar multi-pin proprietary connectors from other manufacturers. The EverDock also takes advantage of micro-suction technology, meaning that the dock will stick to almost any surface and let you easily remove your phones or tablets without the dock moving.

If you choose to back the project on Kickstarter, you'll have a variety of options. The cheapest way to get in will be with an "Early-bird Special" at $39 for a silver EverDock or $59 for a silver EverDock Duo (that holds two devices). Upwards from there, you'll find options for two and three packs of EverDocks and EverDock Duos in a variety of color options as well. As for timing, assuming the project is funded FUZ Designs expects to ship the EverDock by the holidays.

You can find more information and a full description of the item at the source links below.

More: FUZ Designs; Kickstarter

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Smallrivers, the Swiss startup behind news curation platform Paper.li, has raised further funding: $2 million from Debioinvestment, and Polytech Ventures (co-founded by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technologies where SmallRivers is based), along with existing investors/shareholders, including Kima Ventures, and various European angels, as well as co-founder Edouard Lambelet.

The new capital, which brings total funding to date to $7 million, will be used to consolidate revenue growth, with the aim to break even in the coming year, and deploy what Paper.li is describing as a new “semantic analysis engine” that will offer curators additional content discovery and filtering capabilities to make it even easier to build their own online newspapers.

If you’re followed on Twitter by a Paper.li user and tweet a lot of article links, you’re probably already familiar with the service, having been @mentioned as an inadvertent contributor to a Paper.li publication. However, for those who aren’t, Paper.li enables anybody to create their own “online newspaper” by curating interest-based content shared via social media (Twitter, Facebook, and G+), or pulled in from YouTube or blogs and other online content.

The result is a nicely designed “Web digest”, says co-founder Lambelet, facilitating “content discovery for granular/long tail topics and news”.

“Paper.li lets you build your personalized newspaper with content coming from sources you trust.” he explains. “You indicate these sources, you set filters (only when talking about this or that), and every day the service will present you with the matching content (if any) and will let you organize it in your paper.”

To date, Paper.li claims 3.7 million monthly users who are curating over 50 million articles daily, in 7 languages, no less. Lambelet tells me the concept of creating an online newspaper powered by the interest-graph is resonating with small enterprises, agencies, and consultants who use the service to produce a Web digest for their community, customers or prospects. “Paper.li happens to be a super tool for content marketing and inbound marketing”, he adds.

To that end, the service operates a classic freemium model. The basic publishing features are free, but a paid-subscription gives users the ability to use a custom domain, edit the CSS of your publication, plug in Google Analytics, run ads, and send email newsletters.

Lambelet cites Scoop.it, and Rebelmouse as competitors (though I’d also include Flipboard’s new magazine building feature). A key differentiator, he says, is the ability to curate “upcoming” content and Paper.li’s automated categorisation of feeds.

“This is the targeted monitoring aspect of Paper.li,” says Lambelet. “It couples powerful monitoring/listing capabilities with publishing functions, and (thanks to its semantic engine) categorizes the articles and facilitates their organization in the papers, for much easier discovery.”

By now you would think people tasked with testing unannounced smartphones would keep them pocketed while unwinding at a bar. Following in the footsteps of the iPhone 4, which was famously left in a bar and then leaked to no end, Google's next-generation Nexus 5 has been caught on film yet again after a Google employee testing the phone reportedly left it in a bar. 9to5Google posted the leaked videos, which are both extremely brief because the phone is secured by a PIN and therefore cannot be unlocked. Google's Nexus 5 first leaked on video when Google accidentally included it in a promotional video for Android 4.4 KitKat, so it seems fitting that another Googler is responsible for this latest leak.

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Explore the World's Best Museums Without Leaving Your Living Room

[YouTube Link via Arbroath]

Nokia is planning to hold a special event on October 22nd. The Finnish smartphone maker revealed on Twitter today that it plans to announce "more innovation," with a mysterious save the date image. After originally planning to launch a 6-inch Lumia 1520 Windows Phone at a September event in New York City, The Verge understands Nokia has delayed and opted for an October unveiling. Nokia's save the date teaser doesn't reveal exactly where the company is holding the event, but the sand dunes indicate it might be a more exotic location than normal.

Nokia is also expected to launch a 10.1-inch Windows RT device shortly. Codenamed Sirius, the tablet includes LTE connectivity and a special battery-equipped keyboard cover. Nokia may choose...

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Chrome: We've discussed some great tools to clean up your Gmail, but if you're looking for an all-in-one tool with a ton of features, mxHero Toolbox delivers. In one package, mxHero offers send later, self-destructing email, attachment tracking, notifications when your message is opened, and more.

The video above does a pretty good job of explaining how the tool works. Once installed, compose your Gmail messages normally, then click the mxHero button to open up the toolbox. From there, you can choose your mxHero "apps" you want enabled for that message. You can schedule the message to send at a specific time, for example, use attachment tracking to get a notification when the recipient opens and reads whatever you've included with your message, set your email to "self destruct" five minutes after it's been read, or use "private delivery" to compose your message to a group but only show the recipient's name in the To field (which kills the urge to hit reply-all,) and more.

You can read more about the individual toolboxes in the mxHero toolbox guide. You can grab mxHero Toolbox from the Chrome Web Store at the link below, and it's free for individual users (and up to three users on your own domain).

mxHero Toolbox | Chrome Web Store via mxHero Email Toolbox