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Google's new voice search is pretty handy, but it's even better when you can initiate it with a keyboard shortcut so you never have to to touch your mouse.

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Android-powered mirrorless camera to sell for £1299.99 with kit lens

The first UK pricing information for Samsung's Galaxy NX Android-powered mirrorless camera has started to emerge, with British camera retailers Jessops and Wex Photographic both listing the device with a hefty £1299.99 price tag. That money gets you the Galaxy NX body — complete with 20.3MP sensor, 4.8-inch HD display and 4G LTE connectivity — and an 18-55mm OIS kit lens. That's a significant step up from last year's Galaxy Camera, which sold for around £350, but it's not entirely unexpected considering this is a professional-quality camera.

Jessops lists the Galaxy NX as available today for home delivery, while Wex's listing is pre-order only. There's still no word on U.S. pricing at this point, but if you want to take a closer look at the Galaxy NX, you can do so in our hands-on feature from the camera's London launch event.

Source: Jessops, Wex Photographic; via: Pocket-Lint

Google released a $35 HDMI dongle called the Chromecast last week, and it's a great way to get video from your computer or mobile device to your TV screen — as long as that video's coming from YouTube, Netflix, Google Play, or a Chrome tab. Other apps will have to enable support for the device themselves, and some details are beginning to emerge on who might be among the first.

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Google Reader is long gone and while a handful of new alternatives have popped up over the last few months, one popular option is essentially closing up shop: The Old Reader. In a blog post, the team behind the RSS reading web app said that they are giving up development on the product because they're simply exhausted from building the product. As of Monday, the web app is no longer accepting new users. And in two weeks, The Old Reader will turn into a private site for those who've registered before March 13th. If you're an Old Reader user who signed up after March 13th, the time to pull your data and move over to another product is now — user data is available for export in OPML files.

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Netflix’s new user profiles have begun rolling out to the Apple TV. Spotted by 9to5Mac, the profiles let you use personal accounts in order to keep your viewing info and recommendations cordoned off from one everyone else you share the TV with. The profiles also let you set up per-account parental controls, and make the service’s social features like sharing to Facebook more useful.

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University of Texas at Austin students used a custom-built GPS signal spoofer to send a yacht off course. The $80 million vessel relies entirely on GPS for navigation, and with the owner's permission the students used their device to mimic a GPS signal. The yacht's on-board navigation system detected the signal and used it as a triangulation point; no alarms were triggered, and the crew obeyed their computer and changed course.

GPS spoofing devices are illegal in the US, but can be purchased without issue in other countries. The tactic has also made international news: North Korea was accused of using a similar attack against its southerly neighbor in a massive GPS jamming incident last year. As the Houston Chronicle reports, there are...

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Despite big box office welcomes for movies like Skyfall, Man of Steel, and Star Trek Into Darkness in China, a dispute over tax has meant Hollywood studios are yet to see a dollar in revenue from them. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the China Film Group began restricting payments to studios last year as it sought to impose a new 2 percent value-added tax on movie profits. US studios refused to pay the duty, saying it should not be deducted from its pre-agreed revenue split, and sources say the matter has now escalated to a government level.

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While Vine, Flipboard, and Path have all promised Windows Phone 8 support, one particular app is still missing: Instagram. Nokia has tried to pressure Facebook into building an Instagram Windows Phone app, but so far users have had to resort to third-party applications. Instance, a popular unofficial Windows Phone Instagram app that supports viewing and uploading of Instagram photos, appears to now be blocked from using the photo sharing service. The application reverse engineers Instagram's own API to bypass and upload pictures to the service unofficially.

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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.

This is the app roundup. The game roundup from this week can be found here.

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

• GO Launcher HD Hits The Play Store, Bringing GO Goodness To Tablets Running 3.0 And Above
• Looking For Some Android Games? Check Out All Android Police Game Roundups From 2011
• Want Some Android Apps? Check Out All Android Police App Roundups From 2011 + Bonus: Tablet Apps
• Top Android Apps Every Rooted User Should Know About, Part 8: Apps 58-65

32 Best New Android Apps And Live Wallpapers From The Last 2 Weeks (7/17/13 - 7/29/13) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

US spy agencies fed "metadata" about a New Zealand journalist's communications to New Zealand's military spies, who were upset that he had reported on human rights abuses against Afghani prisoners of war. Jon Stephenson was writing for McClatchy and "various New Zealand news organisations." The NZ Defense Force later attempted to discredit Stephenson, saying he had invented a visit to to an Afghan base, a claim it retracted after Stephenson brought a defamation suit against it. NZ government is presently pushing legislation to allow its military spies conduct domestic surveillance of NZ citizens, even a leaked NZDF manual discloses that the media are classed with foreign spies and extremist organisations as threats to the state.

This is where the security manual may be relevant to the monitoring of Jon Stephenson's phone calls. The Defence Force was unhappy at Stephenson's access to confidential information about prisoner handling in Afghanistan and began investigating to discover his sources.

The manual continues that "counter intelligence" means "activities which are concerned with identifying and counteracting the threat to security", including by individuals engaged in "subversion".

It notes: "The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service is the only organisation sanctioned to conduct Counter Intelligence activities in New Zealand. [Chief of Defence Force] approval is required before any NZDF participation in any CI activity is undertaken."

Under the NZSIS Act, subversion is a legal justification for surveillance of an individual.

The sources who described the monitoring of Stephenson's phone calls in Afghanistan said the NZSIS has an officer based in Kabul who was known to be involved in the Stephenson investigations.

To reinforce its concern, the defence security manual raises investigative journalists a second time under a category called "non-traditional threats". The threat of investigative journalists, it says, is that they may attempt to obtain "politically sensitive information".

US spy agencies eavesdrop on Kiwi [Nicky Hager/Fairfax NZ News]

(Thanks, Callum!)

They did it in uniform. Amy Lange with Fox 2 News Detroit:

A Good Samaritan snapped photos of what appeared to be two men impersonating police officers involved in a pistol-whipping and robbery outside a Citgo gas station on Detroit's east side on July 21. Once Fox 2 aired those photos, an even more disturbing picture developed. ... Now under arrest are two police sergeants, a 47-year-old officer and 20-year veteran.

Don't worry, everything will be ok, they have a Robocop statue.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=46973

Comic Book Resources recaps Dark Horse's Star Wars vs. Serenity panel at Comic-Con. Scott Allie said that there will be more Zack Whedon penned stores set after the movie and quotes Joss as saying "Let's see what happens next".

Insanely cute video by Glenn Naylor of the Alberta Parks dept!

Video

In January news broke that Warner Bros. was going to be turning the strange tale of John McAfee into a feature film, and now the studio is closing the deal for two writers on the project: the team behind Ed Wood. Deadline Hollywood reports that Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, whose other credits include The People vs. Larry Flynt and the Andy Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, will be adapting Wired's article "John McAfee's Last Stand." John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (I Love You Phillip Morris) are set to direct.

McAfee made his fortune from the anti-virus software that bears his name, but was wanted for questioning in connection with murder charges in Belize last year. After having his increasingly paranoid behavior documented...

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Internet-only currency Bitcoin has just suffered a setback on its up-and-down journey to wider acceptance — the currency has just been banned by the Thailand government. That means that as of now, Bitcoins are not able to be sold, purchased, or used as currency in any purchase, nor can they be transferred in or out of the country. According to The Telegraph, that makes Thailand the first country to ban the currency outright. Somewhat ironically, this ban came as a result of local exchange Bitcoin Co. Ltd was working to legitimize the currency in Thailand. Previously, the country had ruled that Bitcoin was not a currency, which caused Bitcoin Co. Ltd to reach out to the government in an attempt to lawfully register and operate. As part...

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Andrews and Arnold is a professional-grade UK ISP, providing extremely high-reliability, high-speed Internet connections. The UK government has mandated that ISPs provide an "active choice" regarding network censorship -- that is, customers are meant to have to make an explicit statement if they don't want censorship on their lines. A&A's version of this active choice is simple: If you want a censored connection, you can sign up with a different ISP, or move to North Korea.

The government wants us to offer filtering as an option, so we offer an active choice when you sign up, you choose one of two options:-

• Unfiltered Internet access - no filtering of any content within the A&A network - you are responsible for any filtering in your own network, or
• Censored Internet access - restricted access to unpublished government mandated filter list (plus Daily Mail web site) - but still cannot guarantee kids don't access porn.

If you choose censored you are advised: Sorry, for a censored internet you will have to pick a different ISP or move to North Korea. Our services are all unfiltered.

Is that a good enough active choice for you Mr Cameron?

Real internet connection

(Image: Great Firewall of China, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from chidorian's photostream)

If you have a decent connection, Netflix does a pretty good job of automatically calibrating streaming options. However, for slower connections, you can choose to lower the streaming rate with a secret settings menu.

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If you’ve been making excuses for your lack of financial resolve, science may have your back: Believe it or not, researchers have identified a gene that could determine whether you’re good or bad with money. Specifically, the discovery has to do with self-control—or how some people are better able to resist temptation to make sound financial decisions.

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Unless you can see what it's doing, you have to trust that the software running on your mobile device is for your eyes only

We're going to spend a bit of time talking security on Talk Mobile 2013 this week. A lot of the discussion is going to be about what you share online, with or without your knowledge, and ways we can keep our mobile devices secured when they leave our hands. It's all very important stuff, but there is one other thing I want to bring up, and that's what I like to call the transparency factor.

To put it simply, the only time you can trust any software is when you can read the code and see what it is doing. Maybe you (and often times, me as well) don't understand all of it, but rest assured someone out there does. And they are looking. Putting code online for peer review is the only way independent third parties can see what it is really doing. And that can be pretty damn important.

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Free from £26 per month or £399.99 up-front on PAYG

UK network operator Three sends word that it's now stocking the Galaxy S4 Zoom in "selected Three stores." The handset, which couples Galaxy S4 Mini-like internals with a 16-megapixel camera and 10X optical zoom, is available from Three on contract and Pay As You Go.

Contract deals start at £26 per month for a free GS4 Zoom and a monthly allowance of 100 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited data. That increases to £32 per month if you're after Three's "One Plan," which includes 2,000 minutes, 5,000 texts, 5,000 Three-to-Three minutes, 5,000 Three-to-Three texts and unlimited data, as well as tethering.

On the PAYG side, you can pick up the Zoom for £399.99 up-front. Three's recently re-vamped its PAYG offerings, allowing those not using monthly add-ons to pay 3 pence per minute, 2 pence per SMS, 1 pence per MB of data.

For more on the Galaxy S4 Zoom, check out our hands-on feature from the London launch event. 

Pitch Black had the Flash animation Slam City. The Chronicles Of Riddick had the half-hour anime Dark Fury. And continuing that tradition, Vin Diesel and David Twohy's new, belated threequel Riddick has also debuted an animated prequel. Blindsided leads us into the events of the movie, giving us a tale of political machinations, paranoia and gladiatorial combat, as the famous Furyan maintains uneasy control of his recently inherited Necromonger army. 

It's possibly a little unsafe for work, due to swear words and someone getting stabbed in the eyeball.

All indications are that there will be a brief Necromonger sequence at the start of Riddick part 3, so fans of the franchise needn't fear that this is all we'll see of Karl Urban's Vako and his goth-conqueror zealots. The meat of the film, however, sees Riddick abandoned on a desolate planet with a cataclysm on the way. His only chance of escape is an emergency beacon that summons two gangs of mercenaries with two rather different agendas.

It is, everyone involved is keen to point out, a return to the series' lean, mean roots in Pitch Black, after the space-opera of Chronicles. There even seems to be an explicit manifesto in Blindsided. "Somewhere along the way I lost a step, got sloppy, dulled my own edge," growls Richard B. "Maybe I went and did the worst crime of all: I got a PG-13 rating I got civilised. So now we zero the clock. Gotta find that animal side again." 

Diesel's co-stars this time out are Katee Sackhoff, Jordi Molla, Matt Nable, Dave Bautista, Bokeem Woodbine, Raoul Trujillo and Nolan Funk, and Riddick is out in the UK on September 4. You'll notice that "rule the night" is now cropping up all over the place in very large print very near that title, as if it's potentially much more than a poster tagline. We won't be at all surprised if, at some point in its future, Riddick gets a re-brand as The Chronicles Of Riddick: Rule The Night. But for the time being, its handle is still the short version.

For much more on Riddick, check out the latest issue of Empire, on sale right now on newsagent shelves and for the iPad. And for more movie prequel comicbook action, head for our recent feature.

{Riddick Comic-Con Poster}{Diesel Offers Latest Riddick Pic}{Vin Diesel Riddick Still}{Latest Riddick Pic}{Riddick Still}  

Windows/Chrome: When you're trying to find a movie to watch, you might want to look it up on IMDB, then read about it on Wikipedia, then try to find a place to watch it. Portitle puts all of this info in one place, and is accessible from your right click menu.

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Microsoft's Bing search engine has become the first service in the UK to introduce measures warning users who request online images of child abuse. BBC News reports that Bing users will now see pop-up notices if they search for indecent images of children, warning them that the content is illegal and linking to details of a counselling service. The move comes shortly after the UK government announced its bold and controversial plan to crack down on online pornography, which will require UK internet users to opt-in to view porn content later this year.

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On Popehat, Ken details the astounding story of Katie Barnett, whose home was burglarized by agents of the First National Bank of Wellston, Ohio, who mistook her house for one that they were foreclosing upon. The bank broke into her house, changed the locks, and got rid of many of Barnett's possessions.

The local police refuse to get involved, and the bank's CEO, Anthony S. Thorne, is refusing to reimburse her in full for her possessions, which were stolen and destroyed by his company. Thorne says that because Barnett can't produce receipts for all of her goods (because who does that?) (and also, even if she had, they'd have been in her burglarized house), and because her recollection of her stuff doesn't match the "inventory" of the bungling bank employees who stole everything she owned, he will not pay her full compensation.

Katie Barnett has asked First National Bank of Wellston to pay her for the possessions it sole and disposed of. First National Bank of Wellston, through its CEO Anthony S. Thorne, claims that it isn't paying because Katie's reimbursement list doesn't match the records that its employees kept of what they took and disposed of. Those would be the same employees who tried to find a house using GPS, failed, burglarized the wrong house, and disposed of Katie's possessions, in case you were wondering. Mr. Thorne and First National Bank nonetheless regards them as very reliable record-keepers.

Mr. Thorne is also demanding receipts for Katie's things, and has told her the bank "isn't paying retail." Katie, like many people, doesn't keep receipts for everything, not anticipating that a bank will burglarize her house. Moreover, to the extent she does keep receipts, she keeps them in her house, because once again, she fails to anticipate that a bank will break into the house, take her receipts, throw them away, and then demand that she produce them. Katie also failed to anticipate that someone could burglarize your house and, when called upon to pay you so you can replace your things, sneer that replacements from a second-hand store are good enough for you.

The McArthur, Ohio police refuse to get involved. Would they get involved if Katie burglarized a house? Yes they would. Would they get involved if Katie ran off with someone's stuff and refused to repay? Yes they would. Will they get involved when a bank — a reliable crony of government — burglarizes a house and drags its feet on repaying the victim? No they will not.

Want To Burglarize A House With Impunity, Then Nickle-And-Dime The Restitution? It Helps To Be A Bank. (Thanks, hapalochlaena!)

As the UK government, courts and entertainment lobbyists turn the national network connection into a termite-riddled mess of blocked and censored sites to rival Iran's "halal Internet," Britons are questing about for a way to get access to the free,open Internet enjoyed by people in countries where censorship is not considered a legitimate response to political problems.

Enter Immunicity, a Web-based censorship-circumvention tookit from the same people who created the Torrenticity anti-censorship system. From a normal Web-browser, Immunicity grants access to the full Internet, without the prior restraint on publication and ubiquitous surveillance welcomed by the cowering British establishment.

Immunicity takes the form of a browser plugin that kicks in when you're trying to visit a censored site, routing your connections through its proxy. It's simple to set up and is only active when it needs to be.

“We are angered by the censorship that is happening in the UK and in other countries across the globe, so we got our thinking caps on and decided to do something about it,” Immunicity’s operators told TorrentFreak.

“We saw that there was a gap in the market for anti-censorship services. VPNs are great but they often require a subscription, Tor is great too but it’s very slow and getting it running just to browse a few torrent sites can be cumbersome. Immunicity is different because it is free and implemented in such a way that the end result is seamless access to previously blocked content.”

Unblock Torrent Sites, Blocked Proxies, & Cameron’s Porn Filter With Immunicity [Andy/TorrentFreak]

A moment of outstanding absurdity from the Manning trial: prosecutors inquiring in tones of menace whether a witness is familiar with "wget" -- a standard Unix command for fetching a file from the Web ("wget" = "Web get") that many of us use routinely.

The prosecutors are in their early 30s — nominally “digital natives” — and should know better. “Do you know what Wget is?” they interrogate a witness, as if it is malicious spyware and not an everyday command line program. The government is capitalizing on asymmetric tech literacy and the failure of language when old laws are applied to the internet.

Bradley Manning on Trial

Jim from the UK Open Rights Group sez, "It seems Cameron and Perry have ignored official government policy, invented their own policy and forced it onto UK ISPs. With no legislation, and no complaints from Lib Dem MPS or the ISPs, we have completely unaccountable "nudge censorship" being forced onto the UK population with no debate."

This is what was agreed in December 2012: some kind of compulsory prompt for parents to enable filters, that “does not impose a solution on adult users or non-parents”. Network filtering was never specified, although easy 'whole home' solutions were preferred. These could be in the hands of parents, at the router, rather than being placed in dangerously easily reconfigurable centralised ISP equipment.

For whatever reason, DCMS and Perry have been pushing both network filtering and 'nudge censorship' onto ISPs. ISPs have agreed; now those of us who think government has got it wrong have nobody clear to pressurise.

ISPs appear to have caved into the overwhelming PR issue that child protection can be, especially when conflated with the separate issue of child abuse images. But by refusing to insist that the government legislate, if it wants such specific provisions, they have opened themselves up to a number of problems

Who exactly is responsible for 'nudge censorship'? (Thanks, Jim!)

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.

This edition focuses only on new games. The app roundup is coming up soon.

Please wait for this page to load in full in order to see the AppBrain widgets, which include ratings and pricing info.

Looking for the previous roundup editions?

• [New Game] 'Defender' Brings An Active Role And Nice Visuals To Tower Defense-Style Games
• [New Game] Orc Genocide Combines Tower Defense And Multiplayer Strategy, Kills More Orcs Than Aragorn
• EA Games Brings The Game Of Life To The Android Market – Play Through Infinite Alternate Lives With Up To Three Friends
• [New Game] Glu Mobile's INFECTED Hits The Android Market – Team Up With NYC Cops, Snipers, And Muggers To Defend Against The Zombie Onslaught

43 Best New Android Games From The Last 2 Weeks (7/12/13 - 7/26/13) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

Fans of Randall Munroe's XKCD strip had a bit of a shock this afternoon, when the long-running, auto-updating comic "Time" apparently came to its conclusion.

The comic, which started on March 25, initially showed a girl and a boy (Megan and Cueball) sitting on a beach, with the alt text—that is, the yellow-boxed text that appears when you mouse over the comic—of "Wait for it." Soon it became apparent that the comic was updating automatically—initially every half-hour, then after 120 hours, every hour.

At first, the animation showed the two figures building an elaborate sand castle. Then it turned into much more.

According to the Explain XKCD wiki:

The unfolding story that it tells is set in the far future, at a time when the Straits of Gibraltar have long been blocked, and the Mediterranean has largely dried up, leaving only a much smaller, hypersaline sea behind. Megan and Cueball, living on the shores of this sea, notice one day while building a huge sand castle that its level is starting to rise, and set off on a journey of exploration to try and find out why. Eventually they discover that the Straits of Gibraltar have once again been breached, and the Mediterranean Basin is being flooded. They run back to their home, assemble their village, and board a makeshift raft. Megan has now established that the sea has risen too far, and that they will have to remain on the raft for the duration of the flood.

The tale ramped up in recent days, particularly as Megan and Cueball ran home to warn others about the flood. (The alt text helpfully changed to "RUN.") Once they reached the village and got everyone on the raft, the alt text changed again to "...." That led some on the forum thread, which has grown to over 50,000 posts, to anticipate another change.

That change came today, which also marked the occasion of that 50,000th post. The raft struck shore, and the villagers disembarked and strode off into the woods. Whereupon the words "The End" appeared both in the image and the alt text. The words later disappeared from the image.

Some speculated this was all a case of nerd-sniping. Maybe that's the case. But Munroe clearly paid enormous attention to detail—as did his community, which was able to deduce by the night sky in the comic that the story was taking place in April of the year 13291. So it seems fairer to consider "Time" a story well told, well, in time.

One day, perhaps, the story of Time will be taken up again. In the meantime, see the entire animated story for yourself.

Munroe image courtesy of Wikimedia. Comic images courtesy of XKCD

Doctor Who fans are already looking forward to the series' 50th anniversary special, and the BBC is clearly aiming for a global impact: the episode is going to air at the same time across the entire world. RadioTimes reports that the BBC will simultaneously air the episode in 200 different countries, partially in an effort to avoid any plot leaks or spoilers. "It's always been our ambition to work with our broadcast partners so that international Doctor Who fans can enjoy the 50th Anniversary special at the same time as the UK," the BBC said in a statement. "We'll have more details soon about our very exciting global plans for November." Scheduled for November 23rd, the episode will also screen in UK theaters.

The much-anticipated...

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