Samsung’s Galaxy A7 announced for Russian markets with pricing information
Samsung’s Galaxy A7 was officially announced a few days ago, but Samsung left out some details about pricing and availability for specific markets. Today, the company has unveiled the A7′s release info for Russian markets, including a price tag of RUB 31,990. This equates to about $530 in American currency, which is a bit higher than we were expecting.
The specs for this variant of the device are unchanged, including a 5.5-inch 720p screen, Qualcomm 615 CPU, and 16 GB of internal storage with a microSD card slot. Nothing flagship-caliber, but still a decent mid-range handset with a great design.
Unfortunately, we still don’t know the exact date of when you’ll be able to order the premium phone, but if Samsung is making announcements about specific markets, it shouldn’t be much farther off.
source: GSM Arena
Come comment on this article: Samsung’s Galaxy A7 announced for Russian markets with pricing information
Gas leak forces LG factory to halt OLED TV production
A tragic gas leak at one of LG’s domestic OLED TV panel plants this week might have some big ramifications for the TV market. South Korea’s Ministry of Employment and Labor has ordered LG to shut down the factory while it investigates the accident, which killed two workers and injured four. A spokeswoman wasn’t willing to predict the closure’s effect on sales for Reuters, but it comes days after LG unveiled its Best of CES-winning Art Slim OLED sets and might affect a timely launch (at least for Koreans) if the investigation takes a while. The victims and the plant’s safety undoubtedly take higher priority — just don’t be surprised if there are ripple effects.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, LG
Source: Reuters
UK carrier O2 confirms Denim update on track to roll out this month
While this is more of a confirmation that things are on track with what we reported back in November, UK carrier O2 took to its forums today to acknowledge that they are actively testing the Lumia Denim update and plan to start rolling it out to certain devices by the end of the month.
Apple reaches settlement in class action suit over wage suppression
Apple, along with several other tech companies, has reached a settlement deal today in a class action suit concerning anti-poaching policies that may have suppressed wages among tech workers in Silicon Valley.
While it’s unclear what the terms of the settlement are, the judge in the case had already rejected quite a large sum in a previous settlement proposal. From Reuters:
Workers accused the firms of conspiring to avoid poaching each other’s employees. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, last year rejected a $324.5 million settlement of the lawsuit as too low after one of the named plaintiffs objected.
The suit has been going on for a while, and previously unearthed some damning emails from 2007 in which Steve Jobs had threatened Palm with legal action over hiring employees away from Apple.
Source: Reuters
Limited time ‘Productivity Pack’ combines $185 worth of apps and services for $60
Need to get your butt in gear in this new year? If part of your resolution involves getting more organized, and we’re betting it does to a degree, there’s a great bundle of apps to consider.
Called “The Productivity Pack”, it’s a limited time collection of apps and services designed to boost production. With one-year subscriptions to Pocket Premium, Evernote Premium, Wunderlist Pro and LastPass Premium, it also comes with an 8-week subscription to the New York Times digital edition.
When collected as a whole, the Productivity Pack would normally run $185. But, thanks to the cooperation of the group, it’s only $59.99. That’s right, a savings of 68 percent off the entire collection.
- Keep the articles, videos and websites that interest you available at all times with Pocket Premium’s powerful organization, search, and Permanent Library features.
- Use Evernote Premium as your workspace for daily projects, sync across all devices, enhanced search features, offline access to notes, annotate PDFs, 4x larger notes, and more
- Tackle multiple to-do lists with Wunderlist Pro, giving you unlimited access to collaboration features so you can assign tasks to family, friends and coworkers.
- Use LastPass Premium to generate and keep track of all your passwords, while kicking your security into high gear with multifactor authentication.
Note that the Productivity Pack is only available for a limited time. If you’re interested in grabbing all of these then you’ll want to take advantage before February 13, 2015.
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HTC’s web browser app hits the Play Store
HTC typically puts their core applications on the Play Store for easy updates in between OTA rollouts, and the latest to get the treatment is HTC Internet, the web browser found on many of their devices. This release doesn’t really add any features that weren’t already present on the phones out of the box, but it’ll be useful for bug fixes and the like later on.
If you’re interested, you can find the app at the link below.
How many of you use your device’s default browser over Chrome?
Come comment on this article: HTC’s web browser app hits the Play Store
Microsoft’s mystery Lumia 532 passes through Brazil’s regulatory agency
File this one under odd, but it looks like Microsoft is set to bring a regional variant of the Lumia 530 to Brazil in the coming weeks. Website Janela Tech has combed through some documents from ANATEL, the Brazilian regulatory agency akin to the FCC and found references to a ‘Lumia 532′ phone likely due in the near future.
Not much is known about they mystery device, although the model name RM-1032 is used in the documents. The phone appears to be 3G only, dual-SIM and due to the 5xx series we can bet it is nothing to excited over, likely being just a regional variant.
Palabre is a beautiful RSS reader from the developer of Plume and Beautiful Widgets
If you’re a fan of popular apps like Beautiful Widgets, Bright Weather or Plume, you may want to listen up. The developer of those beautifully-designed apps, LevelUp Studio, created a new RSS reader app that’s available now in open beta. The new app is called Palabre, a Material Design-focused RSS reader that integrates with Feedly or acts as a standalone news application.
When starting the app for the first time, you can either sign in with your Feedly account or simply click Start. If you don’t have a Feedly account, don’t worry. Palabre will suggest a number of popular feeds for you to choose from. Once you’re signed in, you’ll see a list of your unread articles which you can view in a list or a card-like view (shown above). Clicking on an article brings up the in-app browser which is actually quite speedy. The app has a number of different settings which can be accessed in the pull-out menu on the left. If you’re not too fond of the dark theme I have pictured above, there’s a lighter option that’s also quite nice.
Here is the entire list of app features you’ll get with Palabre:
- RSS support
- Feedly support with full synchronisation of articles
- Material design with delightful animations
- Beautiful Magazine or List user interface
- Readability support
- Built-in browser or use your own browser to read articles
- Manage your sources, their categories
- Browse the most popular articles (Feedly only)
- Search within articles
- Mark as read (manual, automatic on scroll)
- Change reading order (oldest/newest first)
- Dark theme
- Save articles for reading later
- Share articles
- Android wear support
Since this app is still in beta, there may be a few bugs to deal with if you’d like to be an early adopter. I’ve personally only experienced two or three hiccups in the app in the few hours I’ve spent with it. Still, it’s one of the smoothest RSS apps I’ve ever used. The app is free, but you can remove ads via an in-app purchase for $2.47. The ads aren’t too bad and don’t arise often at all, so you should be okay to use Palabre without spending any money.
So, how do you get your hands on this RSS reader? Since it’s still in beta, you’ll need to head here and join the Google+ community, then follow this link to become a tester. After that, head to the Play Store link to download the app. After you become a tester, you may need to wait an hour or so to actually download the app.
If this application is anything like the others that come out of LevelUp Studio, we should expect to see a well-running app that will receive updates for quite some time. Has anyone out there tried Palabre yet? Let us know what you think about it!
Federal Review Blames Lack of Resources and Planning for L.A. Schools’ Failed iPad Initiative
A recent study by the U.S. Department of Education has found the Los Angeles Unified School District’s $1.3 billion “iPad-for-all” education initiative, announced in the summer of 2013, had been “plagued by lack of resources and inadequate planning for how the devices would be used in classrooms,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
The iPad initiative was officially canceled last month amidst an investigation by the FBI focusing on the relationship between Apple executives and former LAUSD superintendent John Deasy. The investigation was sparked by claims the bidding for the deal had been altered to favor Apple and Pearson, the higher-education company providing content for the iPads.
The troubled project led to the resignation, under threat of dismissal, of former head of technology for LAUSD, Ronald Chandler. Deasy also resigned under similar circumstances last October.
The new report deems the project too heavily focused on Apple’s iPad as the centerpiece for the initiative, with no willingness to focus on a less-expensive alternative. It also found that the teachers who were supposed to incorporate the iPads into their classroom on a daily basis weren’t provided nearly enough training in ways to successfully integrate the technology into an effective lesson plan.
The report further mentions that senior managers were “unable or unwilling” to voice concerns over these issues before they snowballed into bigger problems, with the Department of Education mainly looking at a lack of an immediate replacement for Chandler, as well as general mismanagement of the project, as main points of blame.
Attempts to fix the program before its eventual end were tried, but faced stonewalling at the hands of a few Deasy supporters, all believing the former superintendint did nothing unethical at any time before or during the intiative’s lifespan.
“The Department of Education had a number of common-sense suggestions … such as better planning, better testing and evaluation of technology, and better training,” said school board member Monica Ratliff, who chaired a panel that reviewed the technology project last year. She produced a report that raised issues similar to those of the Education Department, but it was discounted by some Deasy allies as unfair to the superintendent.
The initial rollout of the program – in 47 schools and with $30 million spent on Apple products – in the fall of 2013 met immediate criticism amid ill-prepared teachers, spotty Internet connections, and crafty students bypassing security filters.
Following a suspension of the contract between the LAUSD and Apple back in August, the program initially begun over a year and a half earlier was officially canceled last December. The iPad-for-all program and its components currently remain under review by the FBI.
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