Today, Twitter became an official member of Washington’s "influence economy," with a PAC and the appointment of its first registered lobbyist in the nation's capital. "The seven-year old private company said it wants to put a bigger priority on its interaction with members of Congress as it grapples with major policy and political issues related to free speech on the Internet, government surveillance of communications, and copyright and patent law reform." [Washington Post]

I was just notified that I’m now a full professor at CUNY. I’m well aware that one could substitute faux for full as I’m not an academic; I’m a professional. So I’m all the more humbled by the title. I’m grateful to my deans — Steve Shepard and Judy Watson — and my fellow faculty and the trustees for it. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through the process but I enjoyed it. Writing statements about my teaching, research, and service required me to think again about what I want to accomplish. Here is my personal statement.

I am grateful to our school for many things but mostly for this: freedom. CUNY has given me the freedom to explore ideas about journalism, the freedom to take on a new career in the classroom, and most of all the freedom to speak. Some may say I say too much, but it is thanks to this freedom that I am able to research, experiment, theorize, practice, and provoke and take part in debates about the future of journalism. And, yes, I most certainly believe there is a future (or else why would I be here?).

In his memoir, Deadlines and Disruption, our dean, Steve Shepard, tells the story of my first day on the job and the rather accidental path that led to my primary concentration at CUNY: entrepreneurial journalism. When Steve and I started discussing his plans for the school, I thought my main role here would be to teach and proselytize new forms and tools for news: new media, online news, digital media, interactive journalism; I’m still not sure what to call it.

I also had an idea for a class that would teach students the business of journalism because I believe our professional disdain for the commercial side of the industry as inherently corrupting helped make us irresponsible stewards of our trade. When I launched Entertainment Weekly, I found that I didn’t have the knowledge and experience necessary to protect my magazine from bad business decisions — only some of them mine — and I vowed I wouldn’t allow myself such ignorance again. Cleaning out our attic recently, I came across a 1993 job evaluation by my editor at TV Guide. It said, “Jeff’s enthusiasm for the business side overwhelms him and he wants to get involved in an area that is not compatible with his editorial role.” I ignored that advice. At that rapidly shrinking magazine, at the bankrupt Daily News, and then at Advance.net, where I spent 12 years before coming to CUNY, I schooled myself on every angle of our business that I could.

At CUNY, I wanted to teach students about the economics of news companies and the dynamics affecting our industry, helping them to find opportunity rather than dread in the profound disruption news was undergoing and to become the leaders who would build journalism’s future. I had the idea of teaching that worldview through exercises in inventing new products — a pedagogical device, really; I don’t think I imagined then that students would be so intent on starting their own businesses. The prelaunch curriculum committee shelved that course in favor of teaching more tools. But Steve and Judy Watson resurrected it and promised I could teach it. That was the first of innumerable times when our deans acted to encourage my work and thus challenge me to explore unfamiliar frontiers.

I am indebted to them both for their leadership, support, guidance, and mentoring. But this is a bittersweet moment as our leader, Dean Shepard, announces his well-deserved if nonetheless lamentable (for us) retirement. CUNY Chancellor Matthew Goldstein charged Steve with building one of the top journalism schools in the country and if we do say so ourselves, he succeeded. Now begins a search for new leadership. As much as I trumpet the virtues of change and the opportunities presented by disruption for our industry, I will confess that personally, uncertainty unsettles me. Yet I hope this moment of change will prove good for us, as we continue to constantly question what we do and how we do it even as we validate — in our new strategy statement — the vision the dean laid out when he founded the school. I have faith that we will come through this transition because this is a school built for transition. From the moment we eliminated required media tracks, our faculty has demonstrated the courage to face and cause change. As our strategy document says, our school was born of disruption.

In my statements in this document, I will try to focus more on the future than the past, on the challenges I face and the opportunities we will see together. But in this personal statement I suppose it is appropriate to reflect for a moment on my past and my career, on how I got here.

I was planning to go to law school but in my freshman year at Claremont, I thought better of my ability to say “yes, your honor” and mean it. Searching for a new path, I realized that I enjoyed reporting and editing for my high school and college papers and thought that could make a fine career. So I transferred to Northwestern and then the Medill School of Journalism.

On the way there, in 1973, I started my first newspaper job for a suburban Chicago weekly, the Addison Herald-Register, and continued working full-time in the business until the day I quit to come teach. I was lucky to get my dream jobs early in life and lucky at each of them to have a mentor. I wish to credit them: Howard Spanogle (my high-school journalism teacher), Christie Bradford, Jennie Buckner, Milton Hansen, Jim Willse (at three companies), Jim Houck, Pat Ryan, Anthea Disney, Steve Newhouse, Judy Watson, Steve Shepard.

I worked at The Hawk Eye in Burlington, Iowa, as part of Medill’s Teaching Newspaper program — a great experience and the reason I was enthusiastic about our internship program from the start. I next interned on the Detroit Free Press in what was still called the women’s section. As I finished my last courses at Northwestern, I got an internship and then a job as a rewriteman — we still called the post that — and energy reporter for Chicago Today, covering the ’73 oil embargo, a great story. Today died a year to the day after I’d arrived. It was “the paper that has no tomorrow,” a heartless flack said to me as we worked on our last edition, even while our heartless owner, Tribune Company, was prying the nails out of our city desk. I caught the lifeboat to the big paper on the midnight shift. While waiting for shootings and fires to cover, I started playing with these new-fangled VDTs that dotted the newsroom. I was the kid who wasn’t afraid of this strange new technology and ended up training much of the newsroom on it. Little could I know how much technology could come to guide my career.

I became an assistant city editor at age 21 — dayside was the fringe benefit. Then I left for the San Francisco Examiner, where I edited the Examiner’s half of a combined Examiner-Chronicle Sunday paper and was plucked out to write a six-day-a-week column (the publisher liked a caption I’d written — such was my luck). After that same publisher and I came to disagree, New York beckoned and I went to People as a writer and then TV critic, which inspired me to write a memo proposing Entertainment Weekly six years before it eventually launched in 1990. In the vast entertainment choices brought to us by our new cable remotes and VCRs, there was confusion, and in that change I saw a need and an opportunity. I was inexperienced as a magazine editor and was able to bring EW to the market only with the help of amazing partners, including Joan Feeney and Peter Hauck (I’ve had the privilege of working with each of them again and both have been friends of our program at CUNY). EW went through a rough and notorious launch, but that’s a long story better told over beer.

I left over true creative differences and was hired by Jim Willse at the Daily News as Sunday editor, just as an ugly strike was about to begin. “Man,” said city desk wag Hap Hairston, “you jumped from the frying pan into the microwave.” After the News went bankrupt, I left for TV Guide as critic, also working on development projects. Then — after a very brief detour at News Corp’s fledgling internet acquisition, Delphi — I followed Willse again to Advance, just as this thing called a browser was released commercially. There I oversaw the content, technology, strategy, and launch of Advance’s 10 newspaper-affiliated sites (including NJ.com. NOLA.com, and OregonLive.com) and helped on the launches of its magazine-affiliated sites at CondéNet (including Epicurious, Style.com, Concierge, and others no longer with us). I also worked on projects at Random House, before Advance sold it, and Brighthouse Cable.

At Advance, I had the privilege of working for Steve Newhouse, who is unsung in our industry as an innovator and true believer in interactivity. It was Steve who taught me the value of opening up to conversation with the public. Steve schooled me in understanding the fundamentals of our business. He later tolerated my blogging and outspokenness. He also made it my job to seek out, learn from, and negotiate with entrepreneurs and technologists. One of them was Nick Denton. We invested in his company, Moreover, where I served on the board, and Nick also got us to invest in and save a mortally challenged startup with the silly name Blogger.

I clearly remember the day Nick demonstrated blogging to me. I confess I didn’t comprehend the big deal. But that changed after September 11, 2001. I was on the last PATH train into the World Trade Center as the first jet hit the north tower. To my wife’s continuing ire, I stayed downtown because, after all, I am a journalist. I was about a block from the south tower when it collapsed, thrown into utter darkness in the cloud of destruction. After taking shelter in a Chase tower, I walked to Times Square and wrote my story for online and print. Days later, I had more to share and so I started a blog, honestly believing I’d do it for a few weeks. Then two bloggers in Los Angeles read what I’d written, wrote about it in turn, and linked back to my blog. I wrote in response and linked to them. And that was my career-altering *ding* moment: Thanks to the link, we were having a conversation but in different places at different times. I began to see in rough form a new shape for media. I will admit that I thought this notion of news-as-conversation was fresh, until I had the privilege of meeting Columbia’s Jim Carey, who told me he’d built his career and scholarship around this idea.

To this day, I marvel at the power of the link to disrupt what we do, changing our relationship with the public we serve (who are now, to name one role, our true collaborators); the form of news (for example, isn’t a link often better service to the reader than a background paragraph — and once we start unraveling the article in such a way, where does that lead?); and the business models that sustain our important work (is it time to serve people as individuals rather than as masses and doesn’t that, too, require that we reset our relationship with the public?). Those are the themes I am pursuing in my work now: new relationships, forms, and models for news.

There is the education of a would-be educator. The threads that make me who I am are obvious in hindsight: finding opportunities in technology and disruption, questioning orthodoxies, benefitting from mentors’ guidance and collaborators’ help, facing business challenges, and embracing every opportunity to join a startup — like our school.

Remember when more than 100 tablets were unveiled by various companies at CES 2011? Archos may someday try to beat that record on its own. A report from CNET reveals that French consumer electronics company Archos is planning to unveil a dozen new Android devices at the annual IFA trade show in Berlin, Germany next month. The company's plans include five new Android tablets and seven Android smartphones, CNET says. All eyes will be on Samsung at IFA as the company prepares to unveil the new Galaxy Note III phablet and possibly its "Galaxy Gear" smartwatch as well. Sony also has a big event planned for IFA, but Archos will try its best to outshine the big guns by unveiling more mobile devices in one day than some rival companies launch in a year.

After Apple narrowly escaped a sales ban on its iPhone 4 and iPad 2 late last week, it looks like Samsung might not be so lucky. Apple on Friday won its case against Samsung, which was found by the U.S. International Trade Commission to infringe on the famous "Steve Jobs patent" as well as an additional hardware patent. As a result, the ITC has issued an import ban on the offending Samsung devices, though an earlier report suggested that the older products covered in the case currently make up less than 1% of Samsung's sales. President Obama has 60 days to overturn the ban before it goes into effect. Florian Mueller at FOSS Patents has the full story.

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Since Betaworks acquired read later service Instapaper from its creator Marco Arment, the startup studio has been pretty quiet. But the first major update is now right around the corner. The web reader was updated and a beta version is available. According to the blog post, the iOS and Android versions will receive some love as well, and many long standing feature requests will eventually come to the service.

Users will soon be able to sort and filter unread items in the mobile apps. Like competitor Pocket, Instapaper will have browser extensions to supplement the traditional bookmarklet on the desktop. RSS feeds will make a comeback as there used to be a way to subscribe to an RSS feed in Instapaper, but it was killed due to server charge and Arment’s design decision. Finally, Betaworks mentions new social integrations.

For those last two features, Betaworks may integrate Instapaper with its other services, such as Digg. Maybe the RSS feature will be a way to import your feeds from Digg Reader. Maybe the new social integrations will be Digg buttons.

Yet, Betaworks has been very careful with Instapaper. One of the reasons the company likes Instapaper is because the service is already profitable. There is no free version of Instapaper on iOS or Android — the app costs $3 on the App Store and Google Play. Moreover, there is an optional subscription fee of $1 a month to unlock a better search feature.

That’s why Betaworks doesn’t want to alienate Instapaper’s existing users. The new development team is always asking for feedback on Twitter and on the blog. Similarly, the new web reader currently coexists with the existing Instapaper.com website.

In today’s blog post, the Instapaper team mentions Arment’s ideas and to-dos for improving Instapaper. While it’s unclear whether he is still regularly giving advice for the product roadmap, Betaworks is taking into account the feedback he gave during the acquisition.

The web reader isn’t the most used component of the service but was clearly neglected until now. This first update is a good sign for the overall product direction and gives us hope for future iOS and Android app updates.

Love this. http://t.co/3nS1r0PnHa

— Marco Arment (@marcoarment) August 9, 2013

When you're selling stuff online—be it via eBay, Craigslist, or just on Facebook—the right photo can make all the difference. Before you take a snapshot with your webcam in a dimly lit bedroom, there are a few things you should consider.

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Nvidia’s Tegra 3 turned out to be quite the popular SoC, thanks in large part to the popularity of the original Nexus 7. The Tegra 4, however, has seen a much different fate. Due to poor Windows sales and a lost bid in the 2013 Nexus 7, the Tegra 4 has experienced weak sales with no real change in sight. So Nvidia is taking matters into its own hands.

What would the new Nexus 7 have been like if it was powered by a Nvidia Tegra 4, rather than a Qualcomm chip? Look to the Tegra Tab to find out. Leaked photos have hit the web depicting a tablet that looks very similar to the original Nexus 7, with a matte rubber driving glove like texture on the back, bearing the words Tegra Tab.

According to reports linked to the photos, the tablet will be manufactured by Shenzhen Homecare Technology. Shenzhen Homecare Technology recently announced they were building a Tegra 4 tablet, one that lines up well with the Tegra Tab. And the company recently revealed some insider photos of meetings with Nvidia, one that includes a picture of a white board with “Nexus 7″ written on it.

As for the Tegra Tab itself, all we can discern from the pictures is that it would come with a rear camera, micro-HDMI port, 7-inch display and stylus support. Stylus support lends credibility to the leaks, since Nvidia has ben advertising DirectTouch and DirectStylus advanced stylus support in their Tegra 3 and Tegra 4 devices for some time now.

With Nvidia filing a trademark for Tegra Tab in the US in April, we wouldn’t be surprised if the tablet eventually made its way here. If it did, would you have any interest in it?

Gallery

Kings of Leon fans who can't attend today's concert in London may still end up with the best seat in the house: the show will be livestreamed over YouTube, and a viewer-controllable 360-degree camera will be set right on stage. Beyond the dizzyingly intimate all-angles view of the band, the livestream will include a number of other traditional cameras to switch between, as well as a main feed that's being directed by Portlandia's Fred Armisen. The show will kick off Friday at 4PM ET (9PM local time).

Though livestreamed concerts may not be out of the ordinary nowadays, this is the first time that a 360-degree controllable camera has been brought to YouTube. Even so, Kings of Leon's use of the technology may not be able to one-up...

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Long after Apple's victory over Samsung in a patent suit, the two companies met again today in court as a panel of judges decides whether to issue a sales ban on over two dozen Samsung devices. These phones and tablets were found to use features and designs patented by Apple, but so far, that decision has only resulted in a major fine for Samsung — in December, Judge Lucy Koh found that damages were enough for Apple to recoup its losses, so an out-and-out ban wasn't warranted. Now, Apple has brought its case to the Federal Court of Appeals, which is set to make what could be a near-final call on the issue.

Apple's requested ban doesn't mean much in the short term. Of the 26 phones and tablets it listed, 23 have been discontinued,...

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If we had the technology to rewire our brains to help remember certain things and forget others, it could help millions of people struggling with neurological conditions, from Alzheimer’s to post-traumatic stress disorder. But it also raises the frightening possibility — depicted over and over again in sci-fi — that someone would be able to use such technology to mess with people’s minds without their consent.

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President Obama held a press conference at the White House on Friday afternoon to announce four reforms he says will increase transparency and public awareness of the surveillance programs being carried out by the NSA and other US intelligence agencies. "It's not enough for me as President to have confidence in these programs, the American people need to have confidence as well," Obama said, concluding: "To others around the world, I want to make clear, once again, that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people. Our intelligence is focused above all on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people, and in many cases, protect our allies."

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The Chromecast is already a pretty cheap device, but what if you don't have one handy? Developer Sebastian Mauer is working on an emulator for Android called CheapCast. It would allow you to treat any Android device like a Chromecast, and it looks to be working just fine in his proof of concept video.

The video shows a phone sending video to a tablet, but it could be any device, even an Android HDMI stick.

• [Hands-On] Initial Impressions Of The Google Chromecast
• BubbleUPnP And ClockworkMod Developers Show Upcoming Chromecast Features: Stream Any Local Or Cloud File To Your TV
• Google Releases Official Chromecast Android App, Gets Your New Media Streaming Device Up And Running
• Chromecast Is Official: Costs $35, Sends Video, Music, And Chrome Tabs To Your TV, 3 Months Of Free Netflix Included [Update]

CheapCast Aims To Turn Any Android Device Into A Chromecast, Early Version Demoed On Video was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Amazon is reportedly working to launch an own-brand video game console powered by Android that will launch by the end of the year, possibly before Black Friday. The rumor comes from Game Informer, which cites multiple unnamed sources. The site's report states that Amazon's upcoming console will play games already available in the Kindle Fire's Amazon Appstore to ensure that a wide range of titles is available at launch. The company is also said to be developing its own dedicated gaming controller for the console, though no details about the controller were provided. Such a device would be the fourth piece of hardware Amazon plans to launch this year — the online retail giant is also prepping three new Kindle Fire tablets, all of which have been exclusively detailed by BGR.

Amazon's high-definition Kindle Fire HD tablets stole the spotlight last fall, but the company's entry-level Kindle Fire might have been the real star of the show. At just $159, Amazon's tiny tablet continued the company's original tablet strategy and steered clear of Apple's iPad in favor of affordability and mass-market appeal. The second-generation Kindle Fire was better, faster and cheaper than the original model but it was still a bit buggy and left plenty of room for improvement. Fortunately, big improvements are exactly what we can expect from Amazon's third-generation Kindle Fire model set to debut this coming fall.

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© Michael Nichols/National Geographic

Michael Nichols has spent the past two years living with lions in Tanzania. An award-winning photographer and editor, Nichols ventured into Africa's Serengeti Plain in July 2011 to document a pride of lions for a feature story in this month's issue of National Geographic. The idea, according to the magazine, was to provide a more intimate glimpse into the daily lives of one of the world’s most fearsome predators — and to photograph them like never before.

"You don't want to be looking down on animals. They hate it; it is demeaning to them," the photographer said in an interview with National Geographic earlier this month. "I couldn't bear photographing lions looking down on them; it made me...

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After the Boston Marathon bombing in April, every law enforcement agency in the city sprung into action. There was video to be examined, suspects to be found, and intelligence to be gathered on any larger organizations that might have been behind the attacks. It's the kind of situation the Boston Regional Intelligence Center was designed for, pulling together information from both city and federal agencies and analyzing the data in real time. But while the city had plenty of camera feeds, picking the two bombers out of the fray proved difficult. When the breaks came, they were from a more old-fashioned kind of police work: combing neighborhoods in cruisers and on foot. In the days running up to the event, when centers like BRIC are...

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Google just released textbooks to the Google Play Store yesterday, and oddly enough, there's a synergistic update to the Google Play Books client available now. This version unsurprisingly expands the notation capabilities, as well as adding some education-friendly capabilities like book rentals and contextual copying.

  

Users can now highlight text and annotate pages that have been scanned in (as opposed to the simple, malleable text and digitally published pages that make up most ebooks).

• Google Play Books Updated To Allow Uploading Your Own Documents And Books, Plus Additional Tweaks
• Textbooks Now Live In Google Play Books, Still Eats Into Your Beer Money
• Amazon Pushes Software Updates For The Kindle Fire (2nd Gen), Kindle Fire HD 7", And Kindle Fire HD 8.9"
• Google Play Books Updated - Expanded Support For Read Aloud, Pinch To Zoom, New Note Editing Features

Google Play Books Updated: Rentals, Highlighting And Notes In Scanned Pages, Better Copy-Paste, And More was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

[Video Link] Via Laughing Squid

The uproar kick-started by the revelations of Edward Snowden don’t appear to be going away any time soon, as citizens increasingly become aware that their online privacy rights can be disappeared at the touch of a button.

Just yesterday the NSA spying controversy claimed another victim, with email service Lavabit announcing that it will shut down rather than “become complicit in crimes against the American people.” The email service would not provide additional details but their silence is being interpreted as a symptom of US Government pressure.

With Snowden now living in Russia, the rest of the world is trying to cope with its apparent privacy-free status. One of people’s first reactions to eavesdroppers in the real world is to lower their voices, and in the digital domain the reaction has been much the same.

The recent announcement from Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde, that he is now part of a team bringing an NSA-proof messaging app to the market, was greeted by an enthusiastic audience putting their cash on the line. Privacy clearly matters to people.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by Kim Dotcom either, who is already heading up Mega.co.nz, aka ‘The Privacy Company’. Mega’s moves towards encryption preceded Snowden’s revelations, but Dotcom is well aware that the market is now ripe for spy-proof services.

The German-born entrepreneur is already prepping two new products – an encrypted messaging app and an encrypted email service – both due to market within the next few months. While previously set to launch from Mega’s New Zealand base, Dotcom has now cast doubt on that assumption.

This morning, Dotcom told his 313K Twitter followers that if new local spying laws become reality, Mega will move its privacy services overseas to Iceland.

“Mega plans to move privacy operations away from New Zealand to Iceland if the new #GCSB & #TICS spy laws are becoming reality,” he said.

The GCSB and Related Legislation Amendment Bill and Telecommunications (Interception Capability and Security) Bill are a concern to Dotcom and other New Zealand citizens as they will force telco providers to provide intercept capabilities so that police, security and spying services can access citizens’ communications online. The bills give GCSB, New Zealand’s spy agency, sweeping powers of oversight into the design and operations of all local network providers.

And Dotcom isn’t on his own with his concerns. Last week Microsoft suggested it may withdraw from New Zealand if the surveillance laws are introduced, warning that they represent a threat to its industry.

But of course other countries are also engaged in widespread spying, and Dotcom has issued a warning to new companies preparing to invest.

“Privacy startups & encryption services should move to Iceland or other privacy friendly jurisdictions,” he said, specifically warning against setting up in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Hitting governments in their pockets might be the only way to get them to sit up and listen but we’ll have to wait to find out whether citizens care enough to vote with their wallets too.

Source: Kim Dotcom Will Move Mega Privacy Services to Iceland to Avoid Spying

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CxotaKxXZ4

This is not the same as the weird "Skye Spotlight" and Clark Gregg talking head videos from earlier this week, but the actual Level 7 promo they've been doing for each character.

Sweden's Pirate Party has suddenly become very enthusiastic about enforcing copyright laws. TorrentFreak reports that the Pirate Party has found evidence that Swedish IT minister Anna-Karin Hatt has violated copyright law repeatedly by posting copyrighted Calvin and Hobbes cartoons and artwork from the Lord of the Rings films on her Instagram account. What's more, the Pirate Party has turned its evidence over to law enforcement officials who have in the past have raided the Pirate Bay website's servers and have arrested its founders.

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As the producer of the world's most pirated television show, you might think that HBO would be very eager to crack down on illegal streaming of Game of Thrones. However, the company has been surprisingly sanguine about all the BitTorrent users around the world who illegally watch its hit show every week. Now Business Insider reports that Time Warner Cable CEO Jeff Bewkes said recently that Game of Thrones piracy is a net positive for HBO because it creates more word-of-mouth excitement and it gives HBO more new subscribers than it takes away.

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Eddy Cue, the Apple exec accused of orchestrating the price fixing (right), leaves court.

The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) said in papers filed in federal court that Apple caused considerable "consumer harm" when it conspired to fix ebook prices. Because of that the group supports the government's plan to penalize the company. US District Judge Denise Cote is scheduled to hear arguments today in Manhattan about the proposed penalties.

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Set aside everything you know and love about Civilization — like the strategic turn-based gameplay or control over vast expanses of land, population, and materiel — and prepare for a whole new way to experience Sid Meier's world. Civilization Online promises to let players assume the role of a single human operating within a massively-multiplayer, real-time universe. The Civ elements come in the form of the multiple epochs of development in which you can live out your adventure and the four civilizations available at launch. There will moreover be opportunities to participate in resource-gathering, Wonder-building, state-ruling, and other familiar aspects of the game.

Unfortunately, publisher 2K Games says there are no plans for a...

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UK startup Renew is taking smartphone tracking to London's streets with the help of its Wi-Fi-enabled trash cans. Already outfitted with advertising screens, a handful of the city's 100 Renew Pods are now equipped with new "Renew Orbs," which use Wi-Fi to track the proximity and speed of people walking past and identify the maker of their smartphone. As GigaOm points out, Londoners might be shocked to find they are being tracked, but many will be unaware that it's happening without their permission.

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Losing your Android device, either to theft or your own forgetfulness, is certainly no fun. But it’s a lot better than it used to be. Google has finally released their answer to Lost Android, Lookout, and Apple’s Find My iPhone: Android Device Manager. ADM should be hitting your device soon, if it hasn’t already, to help you locate or factory wipe your misplaced Android device. Here’s how to use it.

Set up

Android Device Manager will automatically hit your device without you having to do a thing. If you don’t have it yet, you will soon. But before you can take full advantage of ADM, you’re going to need to do a few things, like enable factory reset on your device. Setting it up is pretty simple. First, visit google.com/android/devicemanager.

From there, a map will pop up with some information about your device, along with a prompt to enable the Erase Device function of ADM. You can either manually open up the green Google Settings app, which should be in your app drawer, or use the send notification link on the ADM webpage, giving you an easy way to find exactly where you need to be to enable remote factory reset. If you don’t use the notification, just open Google Settings, and select Android Device Manager. The option to toggle both the ability to factory reset your phone from ADM, and locate it, will be in there.

Using ADM

After you’ve done that, you’re all set to go. At the moment, there are three main functions of Android Device Manager. You can ring a lost phone, factory reset a lost phone or locate your device on a map using your phones GPS. You can also rename what your device appears as in ADM.

Simply loading ADM online will show you the location of your device, but if you’re tracking it while it’s on the move, there’s a refresh button that will recalculate your device’s location.

If your device is located somewhere simple, like in your own house, you may want to use the Ring function. As Google explains, even if your phone is on silent, using the ring function in ADM will force your phone to ring at full volume for five minutes. To turn it off, you have to press the power button on your phone. There’s nothing on your device indicating why it’s ringing, you’d have to know how to stop the ringing or play around to figure it out.

If you believe your device has been stolen, and your have precious information on it, then the Erase Device function will come in handy. After you click Erase Device, a pop up will tell you what it will erase (essentially everything), and what will happen after that. Unfortunately, Google says it “may not be able to wipe the content of the SD card in your device.” Best of luck if you have anything private on there.

If your device is off when you try to factory reset it, have no fear. The moment it’s turned on, it will be erased.

You may think erasing the content of your device is the best thing to do as soon as you find it’s missing, but you may want to hold on. After you erase your device, ADM will not work anymore.

Wrap up

Right now, that’s all there is to it. As with all of Google’s products, we expect to see more features added in time. If you have any questions, please be sure to let us know in the comments, and we’ll help however we can.

Welcome back to Android Gaming Weekly, our weekly recap on new game releases. We still plan to cover upcoming releases and games we’re playing, but this column is dedicated to new games you can install and start playing right now. Check out our top picks and let us know if you have any suggestions for next week in the comments below.

S.M.T.H.

Description: S.M.T.H. (Send Me To Heaven) is a sports game. Players throw their phone as high as they can into the air. The higher, the better. The phone registers the height and uploads the results to leader boards. World Top 10, Week Top 10 and Day Top 10 lists are available.

Zombie Rpg Minesweeper

Description: Zombie RPG Minesweeper is an innovative and addictive Minesweeper-style Causal game that will keep Android gaming fans engrossed for hours of continuous gaming. Players have to rescue an ancient kingdom from Zombie attacks coming out of Foggy areas. The game follows a story-line in which Players advance to a new level after defeating Zombies. Wizards will help you along the way to defeat Zombies and clear the Kingdom of their evil existence.”

Blood Sword THD

Description: Blood Sword: Sword of Ruin THD is an action adventure RPG game with various PhysX effects and dynamic scenes. This game is optimized for Tegra 4 and not only supports touch interface, but game controllers and keyboards to provide a real gaming experience.”

Choplifter HD

Description: In Choplifter HD, players take on the role of an up and coming rescue pilot asked to join an elite, international helicopter rescue team. Pilots are trained to command a variety of helicopters deployed on more than 30 different missions.

rymdkapsel

Description: rymdkapsel is a meditative strategy game set in space. Take on the challenge of building the best possible station by commanding your minions and exploring the galaxy around you. Imagine a strategy game where you don’t have to worry about selecting units or mounting attacks on your enemies, but rather can focus on building the best base possible. That’s what rymdkapsel is all about.

Respawnables

Description: Run, shoot, laugh and respawn! Join the fun with this trigger-happy, action packed, third person shooter. Play Offline or Online for FREE for endless hours of fun: complete challenges, join a team, or just kill them ALL!

Dropchord

Description: Dropchord is a music-driven, score challenge game with mesmerizing visuals and an original electronic soundtrack! Influenced by music visualizers and score attack arcade games, Dropchord is an original experience that’ll test your dexterity while providing endless fun!

My Muppets Show

Description: Join Kermit, Animal, Miss Piggy, and the rest of the Muppets for the performance of a lifetime! Go on tour in this fun, musical game, brought to you by Disney and the creators of My Singing Monsters! The famous Muppet Theater stage is yours to manage; it’s up to you to reunite and recruit the all-star cast of Muppets, and put on the best show ever! Every Muppet that you recruit sings or plays a unique instrument in a larger musical number. Unlock them all to complete your very own Muppets Show in this all-new free mobile game!

Sine Mora

Description: Sine Mora is a horizontal shoot’em up that provides a unique take on challenge, where time is the ultimate factor. Mixing classic shooter sensibilities with contemporary presentation, Sine Mora is a gorgeous shoot’em up that offers a Story Mode that weaves an over-the-top tale and an Arcade Mode that provides deep, satisfying gameplay to challenge fans of the genre.

Kingdom Quest II

Description: It is a time of war and chaos. Begin with nothing and end with a kingdom. SEGA’s Kingdom Conquest II is the epic free-to-play strategy game for conquerors. Dominate real players online. Unite the strong and crush the weak until final victory is declared. You decide who joins your cause or submits to your will. Kingdom Conquest II blends the best elements of card battling, real time strategy, MMORPGs, and 3D dungeon battles to deliver a massive and addictive fantasy war game like no other.

COMING SOON

Houston Chronicle: LOS ANGELES (AP) — Karen Black, the prolific actress who appeared in more than 100 movies and was featured in such counterculture favorites as "Easy Rider," ''Five Easy Pieces" and "Nashville," has died.

Ladar Levison, the founder of Lavabit, the encrypted email provider apparently used by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has abruptly shut the service down, with an oblique open letter saying he shut down rather than "becom[ing] complicit in crimes against the American people," implying that he was being leaned upon by spooks to help spy on his users.

I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.

My Fellow Users (Thanks, @dd_toronto)

We've been seeing UK Nexus 7 pre-order dates for a while, but today we have confirmation that Google and ASUS' latest 7-inch tablet will be arriving on British shores around the end of August. The Taiwanese manufacturer has confirmed to Android Central that the official UK launch date is Aug. 28, which ties in with what some retailers have been saying. (Though curiously, PC World and Currys are still listing a Sep. 13 release date.)

Retail prices for the new Nexus 7 are set to be £199.99 for the 16GB model and £239.99 for 32GB.