‘CloudyTabs’ Brings iCloud Tabs to Third-Party Mac Browsers via the OS X Menu Bar [Mac Blog]
CloudyTabs is a new utility for Mac owners who prefer to use Chrome or Firefox for their browser, but don’t want to give up one of iCloud’s useful features — iCloud Tabs. Created by developer Josh Parnham, the open source app resides in your menu bar and lets you open your iCloud tabs in any web browser you choose. (Via MacStories)
iCloud Tabs was rolled out in OS X Mountain Lion and works with any iCloud-enabled iOS device running iOS 6 or higher. The iCloud service syncs your open tabs across your iOS and OS X devices, allowing you to access your iOS browser tabs from Safari on the Mac. It also works in the opposite direction by displaying open Safari for Mac tabs on your iOS device.
iCloud Tabs is a convenient feature for Mac Safari users, but it is not compatible with Chrome or Firefox for the Mac. If you use an alternative web browser, you need a third-party tool like CloudyTabs to view your open iOS tabs. CloudyTabs compiles the existing iCloud Tab information from OS X and does not require you to enter in your iCloud credentials.
Just like the official iCloud version, CloudyTabs breaks down your open tabs by device, allowing you to see what you have open on your iPad, iPhone and other Macs. Tapping on a tab in the menu bar app will open the URL in your selected browser. You can open tabs individually or choose to open all tabs from a chosen device.
Unlike iCloud Tabs which shares between iOS and OS X, CloudyTabs only works in one direction (iOS to Mac) and does not share your open Chrome or Firefox tabs on your iOS device. If you need bidirectional sharing, you must use iCloud Tabs with Safari on the Mac or switch to Chrome, which can share bookmarks between Chrome for the Mac and Chrome for iOS [Direct Link].
CloudyTabs is open source and available for free to download from Github.
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Roku Streaming Stick: Roku takes on Chromecast
The Roku Streaming Stick, a concept announced back in 2012, is finally seeing the light of day. Wanting to make internet and content streaming even easier to use than ever before, Roku has unveiled its HMDI stick. As big as standard USB flash drive, it does everything a Roku box can. The Roku Streaming Stick is expected to hit shelves in April and will cost around $50. Indeed, this device provides access to more than 1,200 channels and services and now finds itself treading on the ground of Google’s Chromecast.
On one hand the Chromecast benefits by having a lower ($35) price tag and an SDK for development. On the other, Roku’s stick provides immediate access to a much wider library of media and comes with a handy remote. In the short term we expect the Roku to do quite well against the Chromecast; down the road, Google’s device could ultimately draw even.
The post Roku Streaming Stick: Roku takes on Chromecast appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 will ship March 9th for $650
Samsung already gave us a heads-up that the largest of its new tablets, the Galaxy Pro 12.2, wouldn’t arrive until March. Well, here it is, right on schedule. The company just announced that the 12-inch Android slate will go on sale March 9th, priced at $650 with 32GB of built-in storage. As a refresher, the tablet has a 2,560 x 1,600 screen but then again, all of the new Galaxy Pro tablets do. What you will get in exchange for that bigger display is a larger battery and more RAM (3GB instead of 2GB). As for the design, it has the same fake-leather look as the Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 and other recent Samsung devices. Do with that part what you will.
OnLive reborn: can the cloud gaming company find footing with two new services?
In early August 2012, OnLive employees told us that the cloud gaming company was close to falling apart. Despite creating an impressive service rooted in a futuristic idea — playing bleeding edge PC games on the highest settings, remotely, streaming from the cloud to virtually any device — a cocktail of financial issues all crested at once. The result was mass layoffs (“at least” 50 percent), including lead evangelist and company CEO Steve Perlman. OnLive had a new owner, venture capitalist Gary Lauder, and a renewed directive to become profitable. Then, the company went silent.
“My focus has been on turning this from proof of concept into a real business.”– Gary Lauder
Its services continued operating — business as usual, as it were — and as media, we didn’t hear a peep. The usual trade show appearances and interview opportunities dried up. Our last post about OnLive before this was in February 2013. Today, that’s changing: the company is re-opening the lines of communication, announcing two new initiatives in CloudLift and OnLive Go.
The first, CloudLift, takes the cloud streaming concept of OnLive and applies it to games you already own. By logging in with a Steam account (required, at least for now), games you’ve got attached will be “unlocked” in the cloud, playable using the OnLive client or Microconsole anywhere else (including save data that syncs between devices). Of course, not all games registered or bought through Steam will work with CloudLift; just 20 games are launching with the service today, with “dozens more planned.” Lauder told us OnLive’s game onboarding process has been streamlined significantly, specifically with the intent to bring more games, more rapidly to OnLive.
The First 20 Games
| Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY | Batman: Arkham City GOTY |
| Batman: Arkham Origins | Darksiders II |
| Dead Island GOTY | Dead Island: Riptide |
| LEGO The Lord of the Rings | Metro 2033 |
| Mortal Kombat Komplete Edition | MX vs. ATV Reflex |
| Painkiller: Hell and Damnation | Red Faction: Armageddon |
| Saints Row IV | Scribblenauts Unlimited |
| Strike Suit Zero | The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles |
| The LEGO Movie Videogame | The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief |
| Truck Racer | Type: Rider |
Interested? OnLive’s hoping you’re interested enough to drop $15 every month for the functionality (there’s also a seven-day trial). It goes live today.
The other side of today’s news is a totally new route for OnLive. A new business unit, dubbed “OnLive Go,” takes the company’s cloud abilities and applies them to other people’s stuff. The first example is “SL Go” (or “Second Life: Go”), a mobile interface for…you guessed it, Second Life. In this particular example, OnLive’s powering cloud support for Second Life on Android. In another example, OnLive’s working with Gaijin Entertainment to help support people testing out games — rather than having to download a huge file and start a game, you can just stream a demo.
OnLive’s executive staff called this a “much more efficient” method of stabilizing the company, while still supporting legacy customers. It’s not hard to see their logic: Gaikai employed the same method for growth before being purchased by Sony for a whopping $380 million. Lauder insists that the goal here isn’t to “flip the company,” but “to build value — and lasting value — whether it’s for us or for some future suitor.”
So, what does that mean for those of us still using OnLive’s PlayPass system? It is no more, “but users who have purchased games will continue to have access to them,” an OnLive rep told us. The functionality is being replaced (and enhanced) by CloudLift, thus obviating its continued existence. The PlayPack “all-you-can-eat” model — which costs $10/month and offers access to all of OnLive’s games — remains in place.
Whether these moves will turn OnLive around is still up in the air, but Lauder and co. certainly sound more realistic than their predecessors. With major players embracing game streaming in PlayStation Now and Steam, the playing field is more crowded than ever. OnLive is certainly the underdog here: can it fight its way back?
Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD
Source: OnLive
Nexus 5 Camera CPU bug fix coming soon
If you’re a Nexus 5 owner then you’ll know about the bug which causes the phone’s CPU to be maxed out when using the camera, resulting in high battery drain. According to a post by Google on the company’s issues tracker, it seems Google have isolated the issue and will be issuing a fix shortly.
The bug is caused by something called “mm-qcamera-daemon” which causes high battery consumption, and since this process is related to handling camera data, it means that third-party apps can trigger it, so it’s not constrained to an operating system calling function.
According to Google, one particular offender is Skype, which seems to be accessing the camera regularly from the background and by doing so is triggering that bug. We’ll ignore why Skype is trying to access the camera without you knowing…
As mentioned, Google has found a fix for the bug and is bundling it in the next maintenance version of Android, most likely 4.4.3. Until then, the only fix is to reboot the device, and Google are recommending that removing Skype may relieve the issue.
The more significant point is that this bug may not be constrained to Nexus devices, since third-party apps are able to call the camera, so KitKat devices running a Qualcomm chip for camera processing, like the Galaxy Note 3, are also most likely affected. Unfortunately a fix will have to go via the manufacturer for these devices, so may delay the patch being delivered to your non-Nexus device.
If you think you’ve been hit by this bug, drop us a comment below.
[Via Google Issue Tracker]
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Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 arrives March 9
Samsung on Wednesday confirmed the U.S. availability of the Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2. Priced at $649.99 at major retailers, the tablet offers 32GB of storage and includes more than $800 worth of bundled content through Galaxy Perks. Retail outlets expected to carry the tablet include Samsung.com, Best Buy, Walmart, Amazon, Tiger Direct, PC Richard and Sons, Fry’s, and Newegg.
The post Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 arrives March 9 appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Corning Again Criticizes Sapphire as Potential Alternative to Gorilla Glass
Corning Glass senior vice president Tony Tripeny spoke critically of sapphire as a material for displays during a question and answer session at the recent Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference (Via Seeking Alpha and CNET). His responses reiterate the company’s earlier opposition to sapphire crystal.
Morgan Stanley’s James Fawcett asked Tripeny about sapphire versus glass now that “there is one large handset and device maker that people suspect maybe looking at Sapphire.” This one large manufacturer is obviously Apple, which is building a plant in Arizona to manufacture sapphire for “a secret project,” possibly the iWatch or the next generation iPhone. Tripeny didn’t hold back in his criticism of the sapphire crystal material.
When we look at it, we see a lot of disadvantages of Sapphire versus Gorilla Glass. It’s about 10 times more expensive. It’s about 1.6 times heavier. It’s environmentally unfriendly. It takes about 100 times more energy to generate a Sapphire crystal than it does glass. It transmits less light which it means either dimmer devices or shorter battery life. It continues to break. I think while it’s scratch resistant product it still breaks and our testing says that Gorilla Glass, about 2.5 times more pressure that it can take than Sapphire on. So when we look at it, we think from an overall industry and trend that is not attractive in consumer electronics.
Fawcett continued to query Tripeny on the material with the Corning executive hinting that Apple is looking at sapphire for its marketing appeal as the material “has got a very sexy name.” Tripeny also mentions the extra cost and lower manufacturing yield of sapphire crystal when compared to Gorilla Glass.
The formation takes about 4,000 times longer than Gorilla Glass at a significantly higher melting temperature. Its hardness makes machining more difficult and costly. Then the cost per unit increases exponentially because when you have defects in boundaries in the crystal growth process, you essentially cut them out and so unlike glass where we have developed technologies so that we can have very large pristine pieces of glass, when you have that on crystals, what you end up doing is always having a yield issue. So it is really those items that make things more expensive.
Corning now is manufacturing Gorilla Glass 3 for use in smartphones and tablets. Announced at CES 2013, the material is three times more damage resistant than its predecessor Gorilla Glass 2. The company earlier this year also announced a new shaped Gorilla Glass product for devices that require a curved display and a version of its Gorilla Glass with antimicrobial properties.
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Apple Working to Expand Siri’s Third-Party App Integration for iWatch
As Apple continues work on its much-rumored iWatch, the company is placing a significant focus on expanding Siri’s ability to interface with third-party apps, according to a report from The Information summarized by TechCrunch.
With input methods for the iWatch limited due to the device’s size, Siri’s voice capabilities may be one of the best tools for Apple to leverage, and that means improving Siri’s capabilities.
The report points out how the Siri of today can’t do things like book a car rental or make a hotel reservation, or use a messaging app other than Messages to send a text. The improvements to Siri would potentially enable those types of things, enabling third-party integrations that don’t require one-to-one business arrangement between Apple and the external company. Current integrations like those with OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha do involve those direct deals, which limits the pace at which new third-party powers can be added to Siri.
The report also claims that Apple is working on technology to dynamically adjust what content is being shown on a device’s display, offering the example of a running app automatically being shown when the user begins jogging. The technology would obviously be useful for a device such as the iWatch with very limited display size and input capabilities.
Apple has been rumored for several years to be working on a smart watch project, with the company reportedly placing a strong focus on biometrics to include health-related data tracking for the iOS ecosystem.
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BBC makes popular TV channel ‘online only’ to cut costs
The BBC TV channel that spawned comedic classics like Little Britain and Gavin & Stacey looks set to be taken off-air as part of a cost-cutting drive. BBC Three won’t be killed off completely, however — if regulators approve, the plan is to make it an online-only channel that would somehow still serve up fresh content aimed at 16-34 year olds, but do so more cheaply. The idea isn’t hugely shocking, perhaps, given the recent pressure on the BBC’s taxpayer-funded budget and the increasing focus on iPlayer as an alternative to terrestrial broadcasts. Nevertheless, many critics have already spoken out, including the star of Little Britain, Matt Lucas, who said it would be “bad for comedy.” There’s a #SaveBBC3 movement gathering steam on Twitter and, if history is anything to go by, it might actually have a chance of succeeding — a move to shut down BBC Radio 6 was reversed following a similar outcry back in 2010.
Filed under: HD
Source: BBC
CNN’s Flipboard rival now belongs to… Flipboard
CNN bought the news aggregation service Zite to get a fast track in the mobile space, but it never gained much ground versus Zite’s arch-rival, Flipboard. Accordingly, the TV broadcaster is throwing in the towel — it just sold Zite to Flipboard for $60 million. The deal brings a raft of previously unavailable CNN content to Flipboard’s news curation platform, ranging from articles to video feeds for shows like Anderson Cooper 360 and Inside Politics. The network has also agreed to produce custom magazines (shown here) that go beyond what you’d normally find online. CNN’s content is available today, and it’s launching alongside a big Android app update that lets readers sign in with Google, control article density, curb their data use and attach photos to custom magazines.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet, HD
Source: CNNMoney, Inside Flipboard (1), (2)
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