Razer’s 24-hour sale will save you up to 50% off nearly everything they sell
Razer is celebrating the numerous awards and accolades it received during CES 2015 last week, including our own for the Razer Forge TV, with a special 24-hour sale. The event will cut the price of all of its peripherals and accessories. such as its many headphones, earphones and speakers, by 50%. Its PC systems will also be discounted by 30% during the sale.
Android devices will be used this year to modernize future census counts
The United States Census Bureau is planning for the 2020 census by testing a number of digital tools that would allow for the next census to be done almost fully digitally.
One idea is to start sending census forms on the Internet rather than through mail. Another idea is to start giving smartphones or tablets to census takers so that their counts can be automatically uploaded into the system when the form is filled out.
For those that don’t know, the census is taken once every decade to help determine how to draw congressional maps and to help determine how much government spending on infrastructure and services is needed in select areas.
Considering the biggest expense during the last census involved paying people to move the information from the signed form into the census system, these moves to digital devices would save taxpayers billions of dollars.
“In 2020, we hope to use technology to reduce the overall cost of the census by potentially as much as $5 billion in taxpayer money compared with conducting it on paper (as in all past censuses).” – Census Director John Thompson
Therefore, the government is implementing two trials in Savannah, Georgia and Maricopa County, Arizona. In each city, census workers this year will ask people to respond on the Internet rather than filing out a piece of mail. If anyone doesn’t answer, the census workers will go to that residence and input answers directly into their smartphones.
This is not the first time that census workers have used digital devices for their work. A small number of census workers used iPhones to collect information in follow-up visits during the 2010 census. This time, census workers will use Android phones.
During the 2010 census, those who shared a home returned a census form just 74 percent of the time. That is about the same amount as the census from 2000 and 1990. This in the face of the crazy 2010 census conspiracy theories. Apparently, some felt that there was a link between the census and Japanese internment camps, some felt that taking the census meant your property would be taken away, some felt that the census was a secret way to “help United Nations personnel round people up after Obama lets foreign troops control the country.”
Falcon Pro 3 comes to the Play Store with a Material Design refresh
Thanks to Twitter’s frustrating API limits, many third party Twitter app developers have been forced to remove their apps from the Play Store. In the past, one of the most popular third party apps, Falcon Pro, reached its token limit pretty early on which forced the developer to find a token limit workaround that unfortunately didn’t resolve many issues. Developer Joaquim Verges has revamped his app with a Material Design refresh and released it to the Play Store as a version 1.0 release. There are some pretty handy features in this application, so let’s take a closer look at what’s being offered.
The first big enhancement you’ll notice with Falcon Pro 3 is the addition of Material Design. Navigating around the app is fluid, fast and offers some really nice animations. All of your notifications are tucked away on the left side of the screen in a slide-out menu that combines all of your account inboxes into one. You can even clear notifications to de-clutter your activity. The app features column-based navigation that allows you to add or remove as many different columns as you’d like. The developer even added a refresh time algorithm to only pull mentions and favorites based on your activity. So, if you’re constantly tweeting, the app will refresh more often than if you rarely use it. Just like most other Twitter apps out there, Falcon Pro 3 also features position holding on each column along with an unread indicator.
While all of these features are nice, this is still a version 1.0 release, so there are a few major features missing from this app so far. There are no settings menus, widgets or DM columns to be found throughout the app, but the developer is working hard to add all of these features in the next update. Even though it’s missing quite a few important properties, performance is pretty great so far. If you just use Twitter to tweet (and not navigate around too much), you’ll have no problem using this app with ease.
To bypass all of the tokens being used up, the developer has come up with a pricing scheme to keep the app in the Play Store as long as possible. Falcon Pro 3 is available in the Play Store for free, though functionality is very limited if you don’t want to pay. Adding one account will cost you $3.99, and each additional account runs $1.99 extra. After being burned by Twitter’s API limits in the past, this is a seemingly good way to keep the token usage down.
It may not seem like it now, but Falcon Pro 3 will likely be one of the best Twitter apps available in the coming weeks. It’s available now, so head to the Play Store link below to try it out!
LG G Flex 2 priced at €599.99 on Amazon.de
The LG G Flex 2 was recently unveiled at CES 2015 and comes packing plenty of cutting edge hardware, including LG’s latest flexible display and Qualcomm’s new high-end processor. According to a listing on Amazon.de, the LG G Flex 2 will retail for around €599.99 off-contract. This will probably work out to around $600 in the US, give or take, based on the usual price differences.
This puts the G Flex 2 just on the cheaper side of your typical flagship smartphone and certainly isn’t an unreasonable price for a handset featuring a 5.5-inch 1080p flexible display, 13MP OIS+ camera, Snapdragon 810 processor, and a self-healing cover. However, what isn’t clear is whether this is the 2GB RAM/16GB storage or 3GB RAM/32GB storage variety of the handset, although the price probably suggests the former. Unfortunately, there’s no mention of a release date either, although pre-orders are available now via the link.
If you would like a closer look at what the G Flex 2 has to offer for €599.99, check out our coverage of the launch announcement and our time spent going hands-on with the handset at CES.
What do you think about the price tag?
Hackers claiming ties to ISIS take control of Pentagon social accounts
A group referring to itself as the CyberCaliphate and claiming ties to ISIS appears to have taken over social media accounts belonging to the United States Central Command. For the past hour or so, the group has been using CENTCOM’s YouTube and Twitter accounts to share pro-ISIS videos and supposedly leaked documents, though Twitter has already suspended CENTCOM’s account in a bid to keep things under control. While it’s still unclear whether ISIS proper had a hand in orchestrating the breach, a defense official confirmed to NBC that the accounts were compromised and that the Defense Department is “taking appropriate measures to address the matter.”
Meanwhile, as is de rigueur these days, the hackers have taken to Pastebin to issue and offer up a taste of information said to have been pulled from private military systems.
“We broke into your networks and personal devices and know everything about you,” the statement reads. “You’ll see no mercy infidels. ISIS is already here, we are in your PCs, in each military base. With Allah’s permission we are in CENTCOM now.” Fair warning: We haven’t yet been able to confirm what’s exactly in these dumps, so do your due diligence and protect yourself and your system if you decide to sift though things.
Still, the data posted on CENTCOM’s Twitter account prior to its suspension was not the sensational, game-changing stuff one might expect — among other things, there’s a list of retired Army generals (complete with phone numbers) and “Korean scenarios” outlining North Korea’s state of military readiness. ZDNET’s Zach Whittaker has preliminarily explored the files and determined that some — if not a significant percentage — are materials that have already been publicly released. A Pentagon official speaking to the Wall Street Journal clearly agrees: They said that the information shared via Twitter was not highly classified.
This is a developing story, please refresh for updates.
You can now pre-order the G Flex 2 from Amazon Germany
Following LG’s unveiling of its flagship phablet of 2015, the G Flex 2, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, last week, the 2nd generation G Flex is now available to pre-order from Amazon Germany for €599 ($708).
The G Flex 2 is a beast of a device packing a 5.5-inch curved P-OLED display with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 chipset, 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2.1-megapixel front-facing shooter.
Straight out of the box, the device will run the latest build of Android 4.4.4 KitKat with LG’s Optimus user interface plastered over the top. The handset is, however, expected to receive the much-anticipated and eagerly-awaited Lollipop update when it’s finally distributed by the South Korean company sometime later this month.
If you like the sound of the G Flex successor and want to pre-order one — click the source link below.
Source: Amazon
Come comment on this article: You can now pre-order the G Flex 2 from Amazon Germany
Apple Seeds Fourth iOS 8.2 Beta to Developers
Apple today seeded the fourth beta of iOS 8.2 to developers, nearly a month after seeding the third beta and more than two months after releasing the first iOS 8.2 beta.
The beta, build 12D5461b, is available immediately to registered developers as an over-the-air update and it can also be downloaded from the iOS Developer Center. Today’s update also includes Xcode 6.2 beta 4 with WatchKit.
iOS 8.2 includes the WatchKit SDK, allowing developers to create apps, Glances, and notifications for Apple’s upcoming wearable device ahead of its 2015 launch. The first iOS 8.2 beta, with WatchKit SDK and developer documentation, revealed several new details about the Apple Watch, including its heavy reliance on the iPhone and the different types of content developers can create for the device.
Along with iOS 8.2, Apple is also working on a minor iOS 8.1.3 update which is in testing and could come later this week.
BerryFlow Upstream Podcast – CES
For those unfamiliar, Upstream is recurring BlackBerry focused podcast that aims to cover a week’s worth of news within one session held by the folks over at BerryFlow every Sunday. Last night, I hopped on to discuss some of the recent announcements coming from QNX and BlackBerry at CES and considering we haven’t done a CrackBerry podcast in a while, it only seemed fitting that I post Upstream here as well for those who might have missed it.
You can watch the video down below or grab the mp3 audio download as well. Drop some comments below with your thoughts on everything discussed. Also, let me know if we should do this regularly. You all would have a podcast to look forward to each Sunday / Monday.
Samsung makes the Galaxy A7 official, brings a all-metal 5.5-inch device to the mid-range tier
After a semi lackluster press conference at CES 2015, Samsung comes out of the mess with an announcement of a new mid-ranged Samsung Galaxy A7 phone. The device in question hasn’t been a tight-lipped device and has been leaked a number of times with fairly good accuracy. Today Samsung has made the all-metal 5.5-inch screen […]
The post Samsung makes the Galaxy A7 official, brings a all-metal 5.5-inch device to the mid-range tier appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
AIVAnet 