Tools to secure your Android phone

Your Android smartphone, more often than not, carries a lot of personal data, including e-mails , passwords, photos and videos, messages, contacts - and even sensitive office documents. It is therefore important that you keep your handset from prying eyes. Equally crucial is a contingency plan, just in case it falls into the wrong hands...

Use Google

Did you know that Android - version 2.2 and later - comes with a feature that lets you track and manage your mobile device?

Look for Google Settings among all the apps on your handset. It is denoted by a grey icon with a lower case 'g' and a gear symbol. Tap on the app, and choose the last option which reads 'AndroidDevice Manager' .

From here, you can activate features that will locate your device in case it is lost or misplaced, and you can also remotely lock and factory reset your handset.

After you've checked these options on your phone, you can log on to the Android Device Manager website (www.google.com/android/ devicemanager) using your Google account to control your phone remotely.

Protect your handset

An unprotected smartphone could prove to be a soft target for hackers. To guard against malicious apps and OS breaches, we suggest AntiVirus Security Free by AVG Mobile, Mobile Security & Antivirus by Avast Software, or Norton Security antivirus. In most cases, the free versions get the job done.

These tools check the apps you install for suspicious behaviour and even shield your phone from rogue websites. Most free versions can also track your phone in case it is stolen or misplaced; sound an alarm to help you locate it, and even remotely wipe the data on a lost device.

Note: Always choose and run only one antivirus software on your handset.

Snap the intruder

If you want a tool that will help you identify the person who has stolen your smartphone, installLockwatch Anti-Theft by Bloketech. This app uses the front camera to click a photo of the thief who has attempted to unlock your phone with the wrong code. It then e-mails the picture to you along with GPS location, making it easy for law enforcers to track and identify the thief.

The best part is that Lockwatch works silently in the background, so a person trying to gain access to your device doesn't even know he's been photographed.

Track your device

With Prey Anti Theft installed on your phone, you can track its geographical location as well as control the phone remotely. If there is no internet connection, you can send an SMS command to the device to receive its geolocation details. You can remotely lock the handset, unlock it; display a message to the thief on its screen, sound an alarm, take a picture of the crook, and even wipe the data from the phone.

Dos & Don'ts 

* Do not download attachments on your phone from e-mails sent by unknown contacts.

* Before installing an app, take a look at the permissions it seeks. For example, an app that allows you to scribble notes should not ask permission to see your contacts.

* Install apps that have a good rating and a healthy number of downloads (at least over 10,000)

* Use a PIN/Password on your lockscreen.

* Don't connect an app to your Google, Facebook and Twitter accounts, unless you have very good reasons to do so. Just because an app asks you for your account details, doesn't mean you should comply.

-TOI

Twitter is 'best technology firm to work for'

Twitter has been named as the best technology company to work for, ousting Facebook from the top spot it occupied for three consecutive years.

The list of the top 50 companies in the world is compiled from employee reviews on the jobs website Glassdoor.

One anonymous senior software engineer at Twitter’s London office said: “Great people, like a family, that are passionate about growing Twitter to help everyone. Very flat structure, all ideas seem valued and interaction with senior management is easy and often.”

Other staff, such as a former data scientist at the company in the US, highlighted the “great restaurant quality food with good variety” that was available in the staff canteen.

A current intern in San Francisco highlighted the free shuttle bus from the city to the office as a good perk and said that: “interns are treated very much like full time employees, and are generally given full-time calibre work”.

Not all of the reviews were positive, however. An anonymous former employee said that the food was “great, if you want to gain 20 lbs”. He also criticised the goals of the company: “They don't care about the employees and building a company. It's all about cashing out and hitting it big. HR is almost nonexistent.”

Twitter claims on its website to offer weekly yoga classes, free gym membership, medical and dental benefits, paid maternity and paternity leave and a laundry and dry cleaning service.

The list ranked Twitter top and LinkedIn second. Facebook, which was listed as the best technology employer in 2011, 2012 and 2013, only made it to the third spot.

Technology businesses also fared well in the overall list of the best companies to work for in any sector. Twitter was at second place, LinkedIn at third and Red Hat was at 23rd position. In total there were 22 technology companies in the top 50.

-Telegraph

Twitter to be available on mobile phones without internet

Twitter Inc is tying up with a Singapore-based startup to make its 140-character messaging service available to users in emerging markets who have entry-level mobile phones which cannot access the internet.

U2opia Mobile, which has a similar tie-up with Facebook Inc , will launch its Twitter service in the first quarter of next year, chief executive and co-founder Sumesh Menon told Reuters.

Users will need to dial a simple code to get a feed of the popular trending topics on Twitter, he said.

More than 11 million people use U2opia's Fonetwish service, which helps access Facebook and Google Talk on mobile without a data connection.

Twitter, which boasts of about 230 million users, held a successful initial public offering last month that valued the company at around $25 billion.

U2opia uses a telecom protocol named USSD, or Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, which does not allow viewing of pictures, videos or other graphics.

"USSD as a vehicle for Twitter is almost hand in glove because Twitter has by design a character limit, it's a very text-driven social network," Menon said.

Eight out of 10 people in emerging markets are still not accessing data on their phone, he said.

U2opia, which is present in 30 countries in seven international languages, will localize the Twitter feed according to the location of the user.

"So somebody in Paraguay would definitely get content that would be very very localized to that market vis a vis somebody sitting in Mumbai or Bangalore," he said.

The company, whose biggest markets are Africa and South America, partners with telecom carriers such as Telenor , Vodafone and Bharti Airtel Ltd. U2opia usually gets 30 to 40 percent of what users pay its telecom partners to access Fonetwish.

"For a lot of end users in the emerging markets, it's going to be their first Twitter experience," Menon said.

-TOI

Why US President Barack Obama can't use an iPhone?

WASHINGTON: The troubled mobile phone makerBlackBerry still has at least one very loyal customer: US President Barack Obama.

At a meeting with youth to promote his landmark healthcare law, Obama said he is not allowed to have Apple's smartphone, the iPhone, for "security reasons," though he still uses Apple's tablet computer, the iPad.

Apple was one of several tech companies that may have allowed the National Security Agency(NSA) direct access to servers containing customer data, according to revelations by formerNSA contractor Edward Snowden. The companies deny the allegation.

Obama fought to keep his BlackBerry after coming to the White House in 2009, though he said only 10 people have his personal email address. Neither George W. Bush nor Bill Clinton used email during their presidencies.

BlackBerry, a Canadian company formerly known as Research In Motion, virtually invented the idea of on-the-go email, but lost its market stranglehold as rivals brought out more consumer-friendly devices, like Apple's iPhone and phones using Google's Android software.

The company recently halted plans to be sold and is trying to chart a new course by focusing on large business and government clients.

-TOI

How to protect your Twitter, Facebook account

NEW YORK: Security experts say passwords for more than 2 million Facebook, Google and other accounts have been compromised and circulated online, just the latest example of breaches involving leading Internet companies.

Some services including Twitter have responded by disabling the affected passwords. But there are several things you can do to minimize further threats -even if your account isn't among the 2 million that were compromised.

Here are some tips to help you secure your online accounts:

One thing leads to another

When a malicious hacker gets a password to one account, it's often a stepping stone to a more serious breach, especially because many people use the same passwords on multiple accounts. So if someone breaks into your Facebook account, that person might try the same password on your banking or Amazon account. Suddenly, it's not just about fake messages being posted to your social media accounts. It's about your hard-earned money.

It's particularly bad if the compromised password is for an email account. That's because when you click on a link on a site saying you've forgotten your password, the service will typically send a reset message by email. People who are able to break into your email account, therefore, can use it to create their own passwords for all sorts of accounts. You'll be locked out as they shop and spend, courtesy of you.

If the compromised password is one you use for work, someone can use it to break in to your employer's network, where there are files with trade secrets or customers' credit card numbers.

Better passwords

Many breaches occur because passwords are too easy to guess. There's no evidence that guessing was how these 2 million accounts got compromised, but it's still a good reminder to strengthen your passwords. Researchers at security company Trustwave analyzed the passwords compromised and found that only 5 percent were excellent and 17 percent were good. The rest were moderate or worse.

What makes a password strong?

* Make them long. The minimum should be eight characters, but even longer is better.

* Use combinations of letters and numbers, upper and lower case and symbols such as the exclamation mark. Try to vary it as much as you can. "My!PaSsWoRd-32" is far better than "mypassword32."

* Avoid words that are in dictionaries, as there are programs that can crack passwords by going through databases of known words. These programs know about such tricks as adding numbers and symbols, so you'll want to make sure the words you use aren't in the databases. One trick is to think of a sentence and use just the first letter of each word - as in "tqbfjotld" for "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."

* Avoid easy-to-guess words, even if they aren't in the dictionary. Avoid your name, company name or hometown, for instance. Avoid pets and relatives' names, too. Likewise, avoid things that can be looked up, such as your birthday or ZIP code.

One other thing to consider: Many sites let you reset your password by answering a security question, but these answers -such as your pet or mother's maiden name- are possible to look up. So try to make these answers complex just like passwords, by adding numbers and special characters and making up responses.

A second layer

Many services offer a second level of authentication when you're accessing them from a computer or device for the first time. These services will send you a text message to a phone number on file, for instance. The text message contains a code that you need in addition to your password. The idea is that a hacker may have your password, but won't have ready access to your phone.

Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter are among the services offering this dual authentication. It's typically an option, something you have to turn on. Do that. It may be a pain, but it will save you grief later. In most cases, you won't be asked for this second code when you return to a computer you've used before, but be sure to decline that option if you're in a public place such as a library or Internet cafe.

One final thought

Change your passwords regularly. It's possible your account information is already circulating. If you have a regular schedule for changing passwords for major accounts, you reduce the amount of time that someone can do harm with that information.

You'll need to decide what counts as a major account. Banking and shopping sites are obvious, as are email and social-networking services. It probably doesn't matter much if someone breaks into the account you use to read newspaper articles (unless it's a subscription).

And strong passwords alone won't completely keep you safe. Make sure your computer is running the latest software, as older versions can have flaws that hackers have been known to exploit. Be careful when clicking on email attachments, as they may contain malicious software for stealing passwords. Use firewalls and other security programs, many of which are available for free.

-TOI

Nokia Lumia 525 launches

Nokia has unveiled another budget smartphone. Named the Lumia 525, it's the follow-up to the Lumia 520, with improved specs but still a low, low price.

Nokia's Lumia 525 is the company's latest wallet-friendly smartphone. And it could be the last handset Nokia ever announces, before it becomes part of Microsoft early next year.

It features the same 4-inch screen as its predecessor, the Lumia 520. It has the same 800x480-pixel resolution, too, and inside is the same dual-core 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor.

The camera is the same 5 megapixels, and the handset has the 8GB of onboard storage. So what's changed from the Lumia 520?

The 525 has double the RAM of the 520, at 1GB. It also comes with theWindows Phone Black update straight out of the box - this adds more live tiles to the home page, and runs faster than the standard Windows Phone OS.

All the usual Nokia software comes as standard too, like Here Maps.

The Lumia 525 comes with interchangeable glossy back covers. They come in three colours: orange, yellow, or white.

Nokia announced the Lumia 525 in Singapore. There's no word if or when it'll come to the UK, but we'll bring you more news as we get it.

If it does hit these shores, it'll be up against the Motorola Moto G, which costs just £135.

On Monday, Nokia announced the Lumia 1520 will hit the shops a week on Friday. With a 6-inch screen, it's the biggest handset Nokia has ever made.

-T3

Motorola Moto G review

The Motorola Moto G is the brand's new Android-toting smartphone with a serious spec list and bargain price tag of just £135. T3 went hands-on

The Motorola Moto G is an Android smartphone aimed at those who don't want to shell out hundreds of pounds on a handset. The maker describes it as a premium experience with today's technology, with a price that's around a third lower than top-tier phones like the iPhone 5s and Samsung Galaxy S4.

Designed as an alternative to lower-tier handsets like the Samsung Galaxy Fame and older flagship models like the iPhone 4, the Moto G packs some decent specs into its slimline chassis so it appears to be a much better deal than the budget phones that we're used to.

Motorola Moto G: Size and build

Similar to the Moto X, the phone sports a curved back for a comfy grip, along with sturdy Corning Gorilla glass and a splashproof body. It's not full waterproof line theSony Xperia Z1, but it means your phone should be safe it you take it out in the rain.

A range of coloured backs - which the brand is calling Motorola Shells - can be used to customise the phone, and they'll also be a range of 'Flip shells' available.Article continues after out Moto G hands-on video.

Motorola Moto G: Features

The Moto G camera can only muster 5MP, so it's not likely to match up to the likes of the HTC One or Nokia Lumia 1020, but at this price, it's hardly a surprise. We'll take it for a full test drive when we get our hands on a final retail sample of the phone.

While there's no microSD card slot on board to boost the 8 or 16Gb built-in memory, you do get 65GB of free storage, courtesy of Google Drive.

Motorola Moto G: Screen

One of the phone's big talking points is the 4.5-inch 720p screen which sports an impressive resolution of 1280 x 720 and a pixel density of 329ppi - higher than the Retina screen on the iPhone 5s. This makes it the sharpest display in its class.

Motorola Moto G: Performance

Motorola reckons its new handset punches well above its weight when it comes to performance for money. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quadcore processor, running at 1.2GHz, with 1GB of RAM on board, it should be able to handle pretty much anything you can throw at it. It also appears to handle graphics with no visible lag.

The Moto G packs Android 4.3, with a guaranteed upgrade to Andoird 4.4 (KitKat) due by January 2014 and the maker has spent time making sure that each aspect is optimised for power consumption, rather than building a customised UI on top.

Motorola claims an all-day battery life and even reckons you'll get 33% more talk time than the on the iPhone 5s. Obviously we haven't had a chance to test out the battery properly yet, but that's something we'll be looking at in more detail in our full review.

Motorola Moto G: Verdict

At first glance, the Motorola Moto G certainly looks like a good buy for people that haven't got hundreds of pounds to spend but still want a decent phone that will enable them to do most thing that you can do on the flaghship handsets. We were impressed by the screen, and speed, as well as the minimalist. Stay tuned for a full review.

Motorola Moto G release date: Out now

Motorola Moto G price: £135 (8GB), £160 (16GB)

-T3

Send large files: 10 of the best services for sharing big files

The kinds of documents we generate have outpaced the means to cope for some technologies. Pop back in time to the 1990s and you might have sent the odd Word document or image to a colleague. Maybe a decade ago you'd have fired the occasional MP3 someone's way (of your own recorded material, naturally).

Today though, even fairly basic documents might include many embedded images, taking them into the dozens of megabytes. And then there are movies, layered Photoshop documents, audio work files, and more.

Although there's no set maximum assigned globally regarding email, you'll often find providers, services and corporate servers bounce anything that's too big as a matter of course. 10MB is a fairly typical limit, which once would have seemed a staggering amount of data, but today doesn't exactly seem huge.

On that basis, you'll often find yourself needing to send something to a friend or colleague, and realising email just won't cut it.

For very specific types of files, you might resort to joining an appropriate service and sharing your work, at least if you often want to send it on to others, such as YouTube or Soundcloud.

Often, though, you just want to send a massive file on an ad-hoc basis. Fortunately, dozens of options exist, from cloud storage providers to one-to-one upload services. Here are some of the best…

1. Dropbox

Dropbox is so popular that we're wondering if people might soon refer to 'Dropboxing' for file-sharing/online storage in the same generic manner as 'Photoshopping' for image editing. You get 2GB for free and can share folders or links to specific files, such as archives. You can buy extra space, from $9.99 monthly for 100GB. Dropbox's widespread support (in terms of first-party and third-party apps) adds to its appeal.

2. Box

Box echoes Dropbox in terms of sharing functionality, although its free option provides a whopping 10GB of storage. The caveat is 250MB file-size limits, which can be eradicated by paying. Paid plans also provide collaboration options (including email notification regarding downloads and commenting on files), but the free option's great for secure ad-hoc sharing.

3. SugarSync

SugarSync is in some ways similar to Dropbox, although it enables you to back-up any folder to the cloud. From a sharing standpoint there are no size limitations beyond your account's size (60GB for the cheapest $7.49 per month option), and there are tools available for group collaboration and businesses.

4. MediaFire

One of the more mature entries in terms of collaboration, MediaFire gives you 10GB of space for free, limiting transfers to 200MB. Paying $2.49 per month adds long-term storage, makes sharing ad-free, and gives you a FileDrop uploader for people to send content to your account. Document editing is also available.

5. WeTransfer

We like WeTransfer a lot. The free version is ad-supported and gives you registration-free 2GB transfers as often as you like. Each upload stays live for seven days. But buy Plus (€120 annually) and you get 5GB optionally password-protected transfers, and 50GB of long-term storage. The company's breezy copywriting doesn't hurt either.

6. Hightail

Originally YouSendIt, Hightail was one of the first companies that latched on to the 'fire huge files across the internet' thing, and it's grown rapidly since being founded in 2004. The free 'lite' plan - 50MB transfers, 2GB storage - looks a touch limited these days, but the company's longevity is reassuring, and its enterprise options will appeal to corporates.

7. Adobe SendNow

If you're in the design industry, large files are a big part of life. Massive high-res images, audio, video, magazine PDFs, the works. Adobe offersSendNow for £14.65/$19.95 annually, and beyond straightforward sending, you also get file-tracking and a handy 'convert to PDF' option for your money.

8. Egnyte

Most services for sending large documents are aimed at the widest possible market, but Egnyte has concentrated on the enterprise. Security, back-up, granular permissions and speed are central to the service, which starts at $8 per employee per month for between five and 24 employees. This plan includes 1TB of storage and comes with a 2.5GB maximum file size.

9. MailBigFile

If we're honest, it was the name that first attracted us to this British company. That said, the usability of MailBigFile is also great, with a bold drop-well and handy time/upload indicators. Up to five files totalling 2GB can be sent for free, while pro accounts (£2.99 per month) up the limit to 4GB, speed up transfers, add storage and offer tracking.

10. Mega

Founded by Kim Dotcom of Megaupload fame, Mega reportedly amassed 100,000 users within its first hour live. Despite initial issues with reliability and speed, the service remained popular, in part due to content encryption happening client-side. 50GB of storage is yours for free, while pro accounts start at €9.99 per month for 500GB of storage and 1TB of bandwidth.

-TechRadar

Facebook Lets You Edit Posts After Sharing On Android And Web Now, iOS Soon

Typo ruin your social media masterpiece? Facebook is starting to let you edit a post’s text after you publish it. The feature comes to the web and Android in an update today, and toiOS soon. Previously you had to delete your post, lose all your Likes and comments, and repost to edit something. Android users also get emotion and activity sharing, events at a glance, and photo album creation today.

Soon you’ll be able to edit all posts and comments from the web, Android, or iOS. To edit posts, you’ll be able to click the down arrow in the top right of one of your posts and select ‘Edit Post’ to change the text, then click “Done Editing” as shown in this screenshot from Spencer Chen. Your revisions and original post will still be viewable if friends check your post’s edit history, though. For comments, hovering over or tapping a post will reveal a pencil icon on the right you can click to start editing.

The long-requested Facebook feature was likely held back because the company was scared users would bait and switch each other. Imagine if a friend posted “Like this post if you hate Justin Bieber,” and you liked it, but then they edited it to say “Like if you LOVE Justin Bieber.” That could defame your music tastes.

But Facebook apparently found that the edit history section was enough to deter people from such trickery. It started allowing users to edit comments in June 2012, and Page owners have also had the ability to edit text on photo posts for a while. Facebook seems to have encountered few problems so now everyone is getting the option.

Google+ has had post editing for a while, facilitating its more long-winded, in-depth discussion style. Don’t expect editing to come to Twitter anytime soon, though, as it wouldn’t jive with the service’s real-time permanent record style.

The feature could be a big help on mobile where touchscreen keypads make it easy to screw up. It’s always a shame to have to wash away the comments you got immediately just to make an “its” an “it’s”. Facebook may have been losing posts to deletions because of typos, so the change could also add just a tiny more content flowing to the News Feed that brings in eyeballs for its ads.

-TechCrunch

Hands On With The New And Improved Screenhero

If you think screen sharing has already been mastered by the likes of WebEx and GoToMeeting, you probably haven’t tried Screenhero yet. ScreenHero, which launched earlier this year out of Y Combinator, is an app that turns any Mac or PC into a completely collaborative environment — a place where two people can not just share a screen, but also work together on it with their own mouse cursors in real-time.

It’s a great concept, especially for software engineers and designers — indeed, ScreenHero co-founder and CEO J Sherwani says that they have been the earliest adopters of the app in its beta form. But ScreenHero has debuted new updated version of its app for Mac (a new Windows version is on the way) that could help push its popularity further into the mainstream.

Sherwani stopped by TechCrunch HQ this week to give us a firsthand look at the updated Screenhero, and you can see that in the video embedded above.

The biggest overall difference in the new Screenhero is that it’s much more responsive — that’s because its been rebuilt to use H264 rather than its original VP8. The app also now includes voice chat, which was a highly-requested feature (it helps to be able to talk to someone that you’re sharing a mouse with, and now people won’t have to set up a separate call to do so.) The UI has gotten a facelift, as well.

Right now, Screenhero is still free since it’s in beta mode. Eventually, Sherwani says it will offer professional pricing plans for a yet-to-be determined cost.

In general, Screenhero is an app that seems to fit more with the modern way of working than legacy screen sharing apps. By default, Screenhero lets both people take control of the display — it’s built to facilitate a real conversation between equals, not a lecture from on high. It’s a solid philosophy that should appeal to how people want to do business today. It will be exciting to see how Screenhero grows from here.

-TechCrunch

'Faces of Facebook' Aggregates All 1.2 Billion Profile Pics

Got some time on your hands? You can spend 36 years scrolling through Faces of Facebook.

The site, created by freelance technologist Natalia Rojas, aggregates all 1.2 billion or so Facebook profile photos and claims to arrange them chronologically, starting with Mark Zuckerberg.

You can also log in to see where you fit into the picture. (The author of this story, who joined Facebook in 2008, was No. 249,759,340, but an unscientific analysis by Mashable employees suggests the numerical rankings may not be accurate.)

On her site, Rojas offers the following explanation:

Because there we are, all mixed up: large families, women wearing burkas, many Leo Messis, people supporting same-sex marriages or r4bia, chihuahuas, Indian gods, tourists pushing the Leaning Tower of Pisa, selfies, newborns, Ferraris, studio black and white portraits, lots of weddings but zero divorces, ID photos, faces framed in hearts, best friends, manga characters, political logos, deep looks, love messages, eyes memes, smiles, sweet grandparents and some not-yet-censured pictures.

Which number are you?

-Mashable

Charge Your Smartphone With Fire! FlameStower Turns Your Campfire Into A USB Phone-Charger

Charge your gadgets with fire! FlameStower, a startup that came out of Stanford’s StartX Summer 2013 class, has launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to get its alternative charger to market.

The gizmo lets you harness the heat from a campfire/gas stove/naked flame heat source to add some juice to a phone or other USB-charged device. It has a max power output of 3W and an average output of 2W, which its makers say can yield between 2 to 4 minutes of phone talk-time per minute of charge

The team behind FlameStower are targeting outdoorsy types, first and foremost, but also reckon their device could be a reliable back-up option to keep in store for use in power outages and storm scenarios.

In keeping with camping kit, the FlameStower folds down to a fairly flat profile so you can chuck it in your backpack.

And unlike the other outdoorsy/back-up option of solar-powered chargers, this bit of kit can work at any time of day — provided you have access to FIRE!

How does FlameStower work exactly? It creates and harnesses a temperature differential to generate electricity using its Thermoelectric Generator. The user exposes its metal blade to a flame to heat it up, while the other side is cooled by a small water reservoir that they fill with water. So really you need both fire and water for this to work. Oh and air, to fuel the fire. It’s elemental.

The hotter the fire, the more charge will be outputted. Albeit, the amount of energy generated is never going to match what you get from a wall outlet. FlameStower’s makers liken its output to charging via a laptop USB port. Which is to say slow and steady, giving you time to appreciate the great outdoors scenery.

The East Palo Alto team behind the device are hoping to raise $15,000 on Kickstarter to get the charger to market — and are around half way there, with 28 days left to run on their campaign.

They are offering the FlameStower to early backers for $70 ($10 off its expected retail price) and are aiming to ship in December.

-TechCrunch

Gmail For Android Updated With Card-Style Layout

Google’s Gmail application for Android is being updated with a new design which will bring Google’s now preferred “card style” user interface to the Conversation View within the app. This layout, which Google popularized through its Google Now search application, has become the new go-to design paradigm at Google, arriving across other Google products and services, includingGoogle Drive, the new Google Wallet apps, Maps, Google+ and elsewhere.

It mimics the idea of using index cards, and fits somewhere between minimalism and skeuomorphism, as Fast Company’s recent deep dive into Google’s design process explained.

In Gmail, cards will be used to better highlight multi-person, threaded messages in the app’s “Conversation view,” allowing for a “new, cleaner design,” states the company in a post on Google+ this afternoon.

In addition, the app will include other design tweaks, like checkmarks for multiple message selection which makes it easier to see which emails you’re about to move, delete or archive en masse. And the app will alert you in your inbox if account sync is turned off for some reason, to help keep you from missing messages.

Though some users are already seeing an app update in Google Play, not everyone is seeing the updated design just yet. The rollout is a staged one, so your mileage may vary, as they say.

News of the updated Gmail app comes on the heels of some serious issues which affected Gmail’s delivery times for an entire day on Monday. Even now, it seems the damage to the Gmail brand continues – many people have called me today, for example, saying, “oh, I thought I’d dial you since I just don’t trust Gmail right now.” That may be why now is a time for a little good news from Gmail… well, good news if you actually like the card-style layout, that is.

-TechCrunch

Now, keyboard that shocks you out of your Facebook addiction

Two doctoral candidates from MIT have created a new keyboard device that is capable of shocking users overindulging online.

Robert R Morris and Dan McDuff calculated that they were wasting about 50 hours a week on Facebook so to stop that from happening again they turned to Pavlovian
method, Discovery News reported.

McDuff said that the keyboard is able to monitors application usage and if it senses that too much time is being spent on a particular website or application it give a shock to its users, asserting that the shock is just unpleasand and not dangerous.

The system that they have devised uses a Mac's UI Inspector for monitoring application usage and a processing code, which routes on-screen alert signals to an Arduino board that activates a relay and initiates a shock circuit.

That current is then passed on to conductive metal strips that is embedded in a keyboard rest pad.

 

-HT

Facebook kills physical Gifts in favor of digital redemption codes

Not even a year after its inception, Facebook is killing physical Gifts. According to TechCrunch, the social media giant is ending its intermediary role for sending teddy bears, wine and chocolate (sounds romantic, no?) from its partners. Instead, it's focusing on its own gift card, as well as redemption codes for iTunes credits and the like. Why? Well, aside from the cash the company will save, users simply weren't buying physical Gifts all that much. The new Gift page will begin rolling out to ten percent of the site's US userbase over the weekend, and the entire stateside population should see it within two weeks. It's a little less personal, sure, but at least you won't have to worry about getting your loved ones gift receipts.

 

-Engadget

Fujifilm Instax mini 90 keeps instant film alive with retro look, new photo modes

Fujifilm is the torch bearer for retro camera design, but you wouldn't know it from looking at the boring, blob-like bodies of its recent instant film cameras. The company is aiming for more consistency with its new Instax mini 90: the shooter matches its older photo format with the vintage (and far more stylish) look we've seen in Fujfilm's X-series cameras.

Not that the mini 90 is abandoning modern luxuries in the process, mind you. The new Instax more intelligently adjusts to shooting conditions, captures double exposures and brightens backgrounds in a party mode. Fujifilm ships the Instax mini 90 to analog photographers in Japan on September 20th, and should bring the camera to the US sometime next spring.

 

-Engadget

A phone you can literally plug into the wall

Gone are the days of bizarre phones with some special practical use, but not all hope is lost. Earlier today, this author stumbled upon a shanzhai Android 4.0.1 phone with a built-in power plug! It's a bit awkward, though, as you have to take off the back cover to flip up the Type A plug -- we're assuming it has a world-friendly voltage rating, but we'll double check. Should you wish to juice the phone up the old-fashioned way, the micro-USB port is still there.

Externally, this Daxian N100i seems to be very much "inspired" by the Xiaomi Phone 2 or 2S. Given the HK$599 (about US$80) price point (or about US$40 each in bulk), don't expect too many goodies from this outlandish candy bar: there's a dual-core 1GHz MT6517 chipset, a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 TN display, 4GB of storage, a microSD slot, an 1,800mAh cell (plus a spare in the box) and dual-SIM slots -- but for GSM 900/1800 only. The front and back cameras both have a resolution of just 3.1 megapixels, and it was hard to judge the picture quality on that horrible screen.

-Engadget

Emojify Turns Your Photos Into a Collage of Emoji

It can be hard to think of emoticons as art. On one end of the emoji spectrum you have a technically precise, surprisingly appetizing slice of pepperoni pizza, and on the other … a smiling pile of poop. Viewed individually, the icons’ quality and beauty vary wildly, but taken as a set, your emoji can actually become an interesting artistic medium. A new app by VoidWorks, a Singapore-based app development studio, allows users to transform boring photos into pop art pieces by replacing pixels with colorful emoticons. “It really started out as a thought experiment on image representation,” says Kwok Pan, founder VoidWorks. “Like what if the pixels which made up an image are not just dots of colors but have something more to it?”

“We know that there is something there beyond their immediate entertainment value.”

Emojify’s process is closely related to ASCII art, which explained most basically, uses typed text to form a shape. To do this, first Emojify figures the average pixel value and brightness of each emoji icon and arranges them in an ascending ordered list. Then the image you choose is uploaded and divided into a grid where each pixel’s average brightness is calculated. From there each pixel is assigned an emoji based on its corresponding brightness and color.

So, Pan explains, “If the average brightness value in a section is 234, you pick the icon number 234 in the [emoji] list to replace the section.” Pan says he chose to keep the icons as-is, so the integrity of the emoji set remained intact. “This means that I am limited to the range of brightness and colors which the emoji icons offer, and you can see that they are mostly yellow, blue or red,” he explains. Both the contrast and algorithm can be tweaked to increase definition and pixelation.

Solitary images like close-up portraits that have high contrast between light and shadows work particularly well, while photos of landscapes or ill-defined subjects tend to turn into an unrecognizable flurry of emoji. So are the resulting images really art? That depends on your definition. But Pan believes like video games, emoji could eventually evolve from cultural phenomenon to legitimate contemporary art. “Emoji are so accessible and readily available that we don’t see the icons in that artistic light,” he says. “But we know that there is something there beyond their immediate entertainment value, and we are only starting to acknowledge that.”

Have a photo you’d like to Emojify? Buy the app for $.99 at the iTunes app store.

-Wired

Justdelete.me Helps You Pull The Plug On All Those Pesky Online Accounts

It’s tiring, isn’t it? Doing everything online, I mean. Everyday you log into services tailor-made for shopping, searching, sharing, watching, chatting, curating, reading, bragging — that’s a lot of places to keep your personal information, and no one could blame you if you wanted to try to pare down on those extraneous connections. Hell, I’d like nothing better myself sometimes.

A U.K.-based duo consisting of developer Robb Lewis and designer Ed Poole seem to understand that desire awfully well, and they teamed up to create what may be a truly indispensable resource. It’s called Justdelete.me, and as the name sort of implies, it’s a directory of links to pages where you can lay waste to your myriad online accounts.

It’s a deceptively simple resource. You’re greeted with a sizable grid that points you to a slew of popular web services that you probably use. More specifically, those links point you straight at the pages where you can deactivate all those pesky accounts… or at least where you can try. Thankfully, Lewis has done the due diligence to figure out which services can be disconnected from painlessly and which ones require you to (ugh) actually communicate with someone to get the job done.

A disconcerting number of sites and services fall into that latter category. Of the ones that Lewis has added, 10 won’t let you kill your account without first talking to a customer service rep, and 4 (Netflix, Steam, Starbucks, and WordPress) don’t seem to let you delete your accounts at all. Of course, it’s in these companies’ best interests to keep the account deletion process as obtuse (one might say dark) as possible. The less progress you make on that front, the more likely you are to say “screw it” and remain in their clutches.

As useful as the site can be for people looking to disconnect sans headaches, it’s far from being a complete compendium. Lewis notes on his blog that Justdelete.me is very much a work-in-progress — he’ll gladly accept suggestions for services that people think should be on the list, and here’s hoping this thing continues to pick up steam.

-TechCrunch

Delhi Metro launches mobile application

NEW DELHI: Delhi Metro said its commuters using smartphones can get to know fares and train timings with the help of a new mobile application that can be downloaded from its website.

"The application will provide information about nearest metro station, fare, timings of last and first train at stations, travel time, route information, metro map and parking availability on the station premises," Delhi Metro managing director Mangu Singh said.

The mobile application can be downloaded by commuters who have iPhone and Android phone. The users can also find tourist spots near metro stations.

-TOI

Nextdoor, The Social Network For Neighborhoods

Nextdoor, the company that lets people create private social networks accessible only by the people in their local neighborhoods, is debuting its first native Android app.

Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia tell us the latest about the company’s mobile push, and give us a quick hands-on look at Nextdoor for Android.

The Android launch comes three months after Nextdoor debuted its native app for the iPhone, and Tolia says growth on that platform has been strong — more than 20 percent of all the content posted to Nextdoor today comes through the iOS app. The reason that Nextdoor launched first on iPhone is because that was the preferred mobile device of the majority of its user base at that time, he said, which makes sense as Nextdoor was adopted earliest in Silicon Valley neighborhoods around the company’s native San Francisco Bay Area.

But expanding into Android is key, given the wider reach of the Android platform — today’s launch means that Nextdoor has an app for 91 percent of all U.S. smartphone users. Since Nextdoor says its aiming to go international at some point later this year and wants to be used by urban, rural, affluent, and low-income neighborhoods alike, it’s smart to be available on as many platforms as possible.

Some more stats about Nextdoor: More than 17,800 neighborhoods have been added to the platform, up nearly 50 percent in the last three months alone. Anecdotally, the growth I’ve seen in my Nextdoor network in San Francisco has been pretty amazing — regular people really do use Nextdoor to talk to their neighbors about everything from garden parties, to lost dogs, to local crime.

-TechCrunch