Motorola Luge available for Verizon prepaid, its just a rebranded Razr M for $100 less
Verizon apparently started selling a ‘new’ device for the prepaid sector of the company, the Motorola Luge. It features a 4.3″ Super AMOLED qHD 960 x 540 screen, with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 8MP rear camera and a 0.3 MP front shooter. It lands with 8GB of internal storage (minus OS) and offers an expandable SD card slot. The back is Kevlar and the device is water resistant.
Man, a lot of that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Oh ya, it is the Motorola DROID Razr M. Literally, word for word. Seriously, if you compare the spec sheets of the DROID Razr M to the new Motorola Luge, everything reads identical minus the device name and a few missing lines from the ‘Web’ section.
Seems Verizon thought it would be cool to rebrand a device they already have and drop the price. I can’t say that I am all that mad about it though. The DROID Razr M will set a customer back $299 where as the Motorola Luge will only set you back $199. (That is with service) If you get technical though, the spec sheets do offer different Android OS versions though, but to the best of my knowledge, the Razr M is on Android 4.4.2 as of May-ish.
If a Droid Razr M was a device you were looking at for the prepaid side of things, you may as well save yourself $100 and get the Luge instead. Silly Verizon.
Source: Droid-Life
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Samsung Galaxy S5 on AT&T gets a new OTA update
Looks like there is a new update on the way out for Samsung Galaxy S5 owners on AT&T‘s network. The update rolls in at a smaller sized 142.8MB’s, but brings a few fixes and improvements that you might like. Assuming you are stock. Here is the list according to the AT&T support page.
- Security updates and patches
- Application installation enhancements
- Accidental emergency dial fixed on the lock screen
- Several lower layer modem crashes and sluggishness improvement enhancements
- E-mail UX enhancements
- S-View cover error
- Re-activation lock improvements
AT&T makes mention that the update is only available as a OTA. All that means is that Samsung Kies won’t have the update waiting for you when you plug your device in. As usual, make sure you have over 50% battery, a Wi-Fi connection and a little time to kill to download and install the update.
Source: AT&T Via Android Central
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4G LTE enabled NVIDIA Shield Tablet hits the FCC
The NVIDIA Shield Tablet is probably one of these best, if not the best, Android based gaming devices on the market. You get the best of a multitude of worlds. You get your Android fix on a 8-inch tablet, you get impressive hardware for gaming and multi-tasking, you get a dedicated kickass controller and you can stream your PC games directly to it. Heck, you can even connect it to your TV for a bigger gaming experience in 4K if you wanted to. One small caveat that might have kept some from buying it though is that the current model is Wi-Fi only. At launch there was mention of a LTE model, but it hasn’t hit the shelves just yet.
It isn’t a secret that there was a LTE model coming, but it would seem that it is closer at hand than it was when the Wi-Fi model was launched in July. Now that the FCC has the device filing, it should be officially available pretty darn soon. You can easily argue having a hotspots and a memory card, which most of us already have, will be the same thing as the upcoming device. You would be somewhat correct. It all depends on your use though I suppose.
Direct yourself over to the NVIDIA Shield tablet page if you want to get yourself the notification list. And by all means, let us know if you are planning to by this when it does go live.
Via Liliputing
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Google gives the axe to Google Authorship
As a Google products user we often see various projects and changes start as an idea, mature to implementation, scramble to use it and then watch it die. Over the years there have been a few that we have seen, like Google Currents, now another project is falling by the way side, Google Authorship. It is one that you may have loved and seen often in search returns. It was the little addition to an article or post that linked across to the author and their G+ account. I personally liked having it. But alas, things change.
The head shot aspect of the Google Authorship has been gone for a while and the only remaining aspect was a small tag for the author. As of today, that is no longer listed either. The announcement was made on G+ earlier today by John Muller from the Webmaster Tools team. Apparently it didn’t have a big of an impact as they thought it would. As Muller states, ” in our tests, removing authorship generally does not seem to reduce traffic to sites. Nor does it increase clicks on ads. We make these kinds of changes to improve our users’ experience.”
While Google Authorship is dead, Search will still poll G+ and return results from friends and pages that relevant to the query. So for all you blog owners out there, I suppose you can disable any Authorship plug-ins and modifications you have made to comply and participate in the Google Authorship program.
Source: John Muller G+ via 9to5Google
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Mozilla starts testing sponsored tiles in Firefox Nightly’s new tabs
Firefox typically fills a new tab with tiles of your most-visited websites, but if you’re one of the brave souls using the Nightly experimental build, you’ll see something else in there, too: ads. Mozilla has started rolling out sponsored tiles interspersed among websites you’ve visited on Nightly, months after the organization first announced its plans to do. When you first launch the browser, you’ll get a pop-up notification that says some of the tiles will feature sponsored content, and that it’ll clearly mark which ones are ads. But TheNextWeb, which has spotted this latest change on the browser’s least stable build, noticed that some ads weren’t marked at all.
According to Firefox Product Manager Bryan Clark, though, only those companies that paid for the spot are marked, while popular websites like Facebook, YouTube and Amazon will sometimes be automatically featured even if they didn’t pay to be advertised. Clark didn’t say when these ads will arrive on the release version, but it’ll likely pass through Firefox’s other builds (Aurora and Beta) before that happens.
Filed under: Internet
Source: TheNextWeb
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LCD Soundsystem’s frontman is transforming tennis data into tunes
LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy has dabbled in some weird stuff since the group split up three years ago, so the news that he’s now working with IBM to convert the back-and-forth cadence of tennis matches at the US Open into music… isn’t really a surprise. What is surprising is what he and dev-collaborator Patrick Gunderson will ultimately wind up with: nearly 400 hours worth of algorithmically crafted “music” made from boiling serves, aces and faults into instrument tracks.
Why the quotes? Well, take a listen to what’s been made so far — it’s atmospheric and occasionally pretty punchy, but calling it music can be a real stretch sometimes. Murphy doesn’t necessarily disagree either. As he puts it, he’s not actually writing any music, he’s “generating probabilities for music.” While he’s quick to concede that the algorithm is “the primary music generator,” that doesn’t mean he won’t eventually get his hands dirty — he’ll go on and remix some of the algorithm’s output once the Open comes to a close. Might we suggest Haase and Murray’s first match at Louis Armstrong stadium? There’s just some delightfully, ominously glitchy about the whole thing.
Filed under: Misc
Via: The Verge
Source: US Open Sessions
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The Xbox One is ready to play your music, videos and even GIFs
Well, that happened a bit sooner than we expected. The Xbox One update detailed earlier this month is rolling out to everyone over the next few days, according to Xbox Live’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb. The patch brings a revamped party app and multiple simultaneous deletes from the Game DVR in addition to the new GIF-capable (but not MKV-ready as of yet) media player app and bandwidth usage monitor. The latter of which will be very handy to those living with data caps and the multiple-gigabyte updates that have become de rigueur with this generation of gaming. There are a few more bits and bobs packed into the 258MB update, and if you’re feeling impatient you should be able to force the patch this very instant.
Xbox One’s September update is now rolling out with a new media player, Party features & more http://t.co/rXEf2GV2tN http://t.co/ow9XIyCLKK
– Larry Hryb (@majornelson) August 28, 2014
Filed under: Gaming, Home Entertainment, HD, Microsoft
Via: Larry Hyrb (Twitter)
Source: Major Nelson
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Google shows off ‘Project Wing’ delivery drones
Amazon is selling a phone and reportedly even getting into the online ad business, so of course Google is ready to compete with its still-in-testing Prime Air drone delivery service. The Atlantic has a report on what is being called “Project Wing,” a part of the Google X labs that have worked on Project Loon, Glass, driverless cars and so much more. As shown above, the idea is for a tail sitter unmanned aircraft (shown above, described as a hybrid between a plane and a helicopter that takes off and lands vertically), where the drone flies in like a plane, then hovers and lowers a package to the ground by wire before releasing it. The “egg” at the end of the wire hits the ground and drops the package before being pulled back up into the drone. So can you expect to receive a Google Shopping Express order this way anytime soon? Probably not right away, as the test shown took place in Australia, and there’s plenty of testing and regulatory hurdles to get over before anyone is dropping off packages this way. If you’re an interested partner (hey Netflix, maybe drones aren’t a joke?) there’s a sign-up sheet available.
Update: Check after the break for a video of the project.
Filed under: Robots, Transportation, Google
Source: The Atlantic, BBC, Sydney Morning Herald
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Facebook is testing keyword search on older posts
If you ever find yourself trying to remember just exactly what restaurant your friend recommended on Facebook several months ago, you might be able to do so soon with just a simple keyword search. Along with a “satire” tag and stickers in comments, it appears the social network is testing a feature that’ll let you do a keyword search on old posts from people in your network. To be clear, the search will only be on posts that are meant for you to see. In other words, posts that your friends published as private will still be banned from your curious eyes if you’re not the intended audience. Additionally, this test is apparently mobile-only. A Facebook spokesperson gave us this statement: “We’re testing an improvement to search on mobile. In this test you can use keywords to search for posts you’re in the audience for on Facebook.” It seems the test has rolled out to a limited few for now, though seeing as it seems a bit of a no-brainer for us, we won’t be surprised if this is rolled out officially some time soon.
Filed under: Internet, Mobile, Facebook
Source: Bloomberg
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Engadget Daily: Apple’s September 9th iPhone event, LG’s G Watch R, and more!
Today, we take a look at the LG G Watch R, catch Schrödinger’s cat, learn about Apple’s next iPhone event, uncover the science behind the traveling stones of Death Valley, and more! Read on for Engadget’s news highlights from the last 24 hours.
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AIVAnet 