Get the best phones of 2013 for a penny on Amazon
Technology is great. Every year devices get stronger and more powerful. To me, last year was a breakthrough year in regards for smartphone development because we had finally reached a point where we had enough RAM and processing power to run most apps seemingly effortlessly.
In 2013, the potential customer had to pick their potential phone based on things other than specs (i.e. build quality, camera, screen size, etc.). These Flagships from last year can still compete with the best phones of today.
Because last generations big name phones still perform superbly, I have no problem recommending any them to those inquiring about which phone to purchase.
With that being said, I am again making that recommendation as Amazon has last year’s flagships on sale for 1 red cent with a 2-year contract.
Whether its the fit and finish of the HTC One (M7), the endless features of the Samsung Galaxy S4, or the battery life of the LG G2, there is a smartphone here to fit your needs.
So go ahead, don’t be nervous about buying one of these phones as they still perform spectacularly and will be relevant for some time to come. For a penny you can’t go wrong.
HTC One (M7) AT&T, Verizon, Sprint
Samsung Galaxy S4 AT&T, Verizon, Sprint
Motorola Moto X AT&T, Verizon, Sprint
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Apple Releases Guidelines for Law Enforcement Data Requests
In a new legal resources page posted on its website Wednesday night (via AppleInsider), Apple outlined its guidelines regarding requests for customer data from from U.S. law enforcement agencies, specifying what information the company can and can not retrieve from devices upon the receipt of a search warrant or legal notice.
Regarding the extraction of data from passcode locked iOS devices, Apple states that it may only retrieve information from its own first party apps, which includes SMS messages, photos, videos, contacts, audio recording, and call history. However, Apple can not provide access to email, calendar entries or third-party app data. The company says the data extraction process itself can only be performed on devices in “good working order” at its Cupertino, California headquarters.
Apple will also assist law enforcement in returning lost iPhones to their rightful owners, agreeing to contact the customer of record and have them contact law enforcement to get their property back pending available information.
The new page follows a report from The Washington Post last week which stated that the company would begin notifying its users of secret personal data requests from law enforcement. Apple has become increasingly concerned about privacy matters since the discovery of PRISM, a secret intelligence program ran by the NSA.
CEO Tim Cook was noted as saying that the NSA would have to “cart [Apple] out in a box” before it could access the company’s servers, as Apple also hired certified privacy professional Sabrina Ross last month to oversee the protection of consumer data.
Google Maps Updates to Verison 8! Google Camera Adds Much Needed Feature! – App Updates
Happy Hump Day gang, and when it’s Hump Day; Google starts humping away with updates. Quite a few this week. Google Maps probably gets the most significant update, by updating to version 8. The Google Camera gets that taking photos while taking video feature which will please a lot of you All updates are down below, so get them on your devices.
App Updates
Google Maps 8.0.0
Google Play Services 4.4
Google Camera
Google Wallet
All other updates here
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Nintendo responds to marriage equality campaign for its bizarre life-sim
Nintendo has no problem with its Mii-based Tomodachi Life being off-kilter, but when it comes to the handheld game’s same-sex avatars being able to wed, well, that’s a different story. Tomodachi Life is all about the interactions and relationships between an island full of Miis, and as two characters’ dating progresses they’ll eventually walk down the aisle, unlock a bigger home and have children — so long as one is, say, Mario and the other is Princess Peach. A fan called the gaming giant on this, urging the internet to use the “#Miiquality” hashtag across social media when requesting that the company change its stance. Nintendo’s response? It told the Associated Press that it “never intended to make any form of social commentary” with the 3DS game’s launch.
“The relationship options in the game represent a playful alternate world rather than a real-life simulation. We hope that all of our fans will see that ‘Tomodachi Life’ was intended to be a whimsical and quirky game, and that we were absolutely not trying to provide social commentary.”
This isn’t a new issue. After the game launched in Japan last year, there was a bug that allowed male Miis to marry one another and have children (but not two females). Nintendo addressed this by telling players to download a title update if they noticed “human relations that become strange.” In regards to that, the outfit recently told the AP via email that “the ability for same-sex relationships to occur in the game was not part of the original game that launched in Japan, and that game is made up of the same code that was used to localize it for other regions outside of Japan.”
Changing the game this close to release isn’t feasible, but a patch could be issued after the game releases. To that, Nintendo told the AP that it’s “carefully and thoughtfully” considered the responses it’d received via Twitter and the like, and it will continue considering the feedback. “We’re using this as an opportunity to better understand our consumers and their expectations of us at all levels of the organization.”
It’s worth noting that gay marriage isn’t legal in Japan, and this could be seen as a reflection of the country’s values. In contrast, Western-developed games like the Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls, Fable, Mass Effect and The Sims series have taken steps to be more inclusive, allowing same-sex marriage and relationships.
Via: CNet
Source: Associated Press
Adobe Debuts ‘Adobe Voice’ Video Storytelling App for iPad [iOS Blog]
Adobe today announced Adobe Voice, a new iPad app that allows users to make simple animated video “stories” that incorporate voice, photos, icons, music, animated themes, and more. Designed for people that have little to no filmmaking experience, Adobe Voice imagines itself as a useful presentation creation tool for everyone from small business owners to students.
Designed to help people make an impact online and across social networks — without requiring any filming or editing — Adobe Voice is ideal for creative professionals prototyping a project, nonprofits championing a cause, small business owners connecting with customers or students looking to create an interactive and engaging school report.
Adobe Voice can be used to create videos for a wide array of topics, though they are more akin to animated slideshows than traditional videos. The app has a gallery that includes several pre-made videos available through an “Explore” feature, showing the myriad ways the videos can be used: delivering a homework assignment, telling a story, showing off a product, and describing a charity organization are all given as examples.
Adobe aims to assist in the video creation process from idea to completed video with Adobe Voice. The app opens with a set of general story templates that can be used to create a video, including “Explain Something,” “Teach a Lesson,” “Share an Invitation,” and “Promote an Idea,” among others. The app also includes ideas for inspiration, suggesting title topics from categories ranging from personal to business to instructional.
Once a template is chosen, the app walks a user through the process of creating a video using simple tap gestures to insert audio and images to a series of slides. Each slide begins with a recording of the user’s own voice, which is then set to music.
Icons, text, and images are then added to each slide, from Adobe’s own cache of licensed content. Users can search for a photo or icon to represent what they’re aiming to convey, which can be added to a video in a few simple steps. By combining several image and text slides with user-created voiceovers, the video is generated bit-by-bit and the entire creation process can take as little as just a few minutes.
Video stories can be customized with a variety of different animated themes (there are more than 30), several different layouts, and mood-appropriate music choices. They’re also sharable through a number of different social media outlets including Facebook and Twitter, as well as Adobe’s Creative Cloud platform.
Adobe Voice can be downloaded from the App Store for free. It requires both iOS 7 and an iPad 2 or later. [Direct Link]
T-Mobile and Sprint HTC One S get security fix update for Heartbleed
There is almost something cruel about pushing out an update to an older device. Especially when there was talks of updates to newer Android versions that were dropped. It is still good that T-Mobile, Sprint and HTC still care enough to patch up security issues though. Today both companies started pushing out an OTA update for the aging, or super old, HTC One S. The update is a small 15MB file that takes just a couple minutes to push through. The only significance to the update is a security fix for Heartbleed. Seriously, the screenshots I took show it.
Head into Settings >About > Software Updates > Check Now if you happen to still rock the HTC One S.
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Nintendo’s smartphone efforts start to surface
At the start of the year, Nintendo explained that while it wasn’t bringing its gaming properties to the smartphone carrying millions, it would be tackling the platform as a way of attracting more people to its games and consoles. Let’s not get too excited — the above isn’t an app (apparently), but a web-based portal. Nintendo’s done these in the past, but they haven’t been quite as feature-rich as this. You’ll see a feed of your friends activities (this one’s all about Mario Kart), while there’s apparently separate pages for movies and rankings. There’s no Nintendo Network ID required to access the service, but you will need said ID to login and establish your own rankings and upload videos. No launch dates, but we’d assume it will fall in line with the launch of the next Mario Kart installment. Oh, and there’s E3 next month.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Nintendo
Source: Nintendo
Samsung replaces its mobile design chief
It might have been defiantly plastic, but the Galaxy S5′s lukewarm critical reception has apparently stimulated change at the higher levels of Samsung. Chang Dong-hoon, formerly Head of Mobile Design, tendered his resignation last week, and will be replaced by his VP, Lee Min-hyouk. According to Reuters, Lee was heavily involved in designing the Galaxy smartphone series. It’s speculation as to how this will affect Samsung’s future smart devices: judging on past form, we are likely to see the Note 3′s successor this summer. And what about those rumors of a premium-made Galaxy S5? And we don’t simply mean a coating of Swarovski.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung
Source: Reuters
Adobe Voice lets amateurs make videos like a pro (sort of)
Whether you’re doing a book report or trying to show someone how to boil an egg: video can make it a heck of a lot easier for you to get your point across. Adobe’s new iPad app, Voice, hopes to make the often time-consuming experience of creating your own such videos a lot faster and easier. The app guides you through making a sharable vid, from the conception of your idea to the finished product. We’ve had a chance to try it out for the past week. We found that the app makes it easy to create some pretty professional looking stuff without having any special skills or a lot of time, but there’s just one thing missing.
To kick things off with Voice, you’ll need to pick a topic and a story type. Once you do, the app will launch a project for your video — complete with instructional cards that give you an idea of how to tell your tale. The app is broken into several types of stories, which you may not realize are formulaic, but they are. For instance, a “Hero’s Journey” will start with a Setup Card, followed by a Call to Adventure, Challenge, Climax and finally, a Resolution. Each card provides a bit of detail on what you should be saying (and showing) on each card. It seems a bit elementary at first, but it’s surprising how that little bit of direction can help you stay on track and create a video someone is actually going to be able to follow and want to watch.
Simple is the name of the game with Voice. The app’s instructions are really easy to follow, as is adding desired elements to your story. Tapping on a card opens it up for editing. For each part of your story you can add a still photo, text or an icon from the app’s built-in library. Voice doesn’t support video elements (yet), which keeps things simple, but is a huge downer for someone who wants to include, you know, some actual moving pictures in their project. That said, the built-in photos and the icons are really great looking — we considered them an asset rather than something we had to settle for. All of the (over 100,000!) images you can access from within the app are available under a Creative Commons license, so you’re free to add them as you please. Even better, Adobe keeps track of everything you use, and includes proper attribution in the credits at the end of your video.
Rather than recording audio for the full video at once, Voice does it one card at at a time. Once you’re done, Adobe enhances your voiceover to make it sound like it was recorded in a studio rather than on your iPad. It also adds a soundtrack to your monologue from its library. Track options are organized by the type of emotion they’re intended to evoke — i.e. playful, relaxed — and are mixed in like the score to a good movie, so you barely notice them. Each video also gets the benefit of one of 32 different themes. Built by graphic artists, the themes take a page from Adobe’s professional motion graphics program After Effects, and handle things like timing and transitions for your vid. The end result is a polished, professional-looking job (seriously) suitable for your business, or just making all the others kids in class look like rank amateurs.
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile
Nintendo is making entirely new consoles for emerging markets
Nintendo’s Wii U woes are well known by this point, but the Japanese company’s latest move to expand its gaming reach is incredibly unexpected. Rather than pare down the existing Wii U hardware for emerging markets, the outfit is developing an entirely new console, according to Bloomberg. “We want to make new things, with new thinking rather than a cheaper version of what we currently have,” company president Satoru Iwata said. “The product and price balance must be made from scratch.”
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Nintendo
Source: Bloomberg
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