Kinivo BTX450: Bluetooth speaker review
I have had the great pleasure of having the Kinivo BTX450 on my desk for quite a while now. While it might not be the best for music, it is great for watching videos or listening to podcasts.
The Good
What is it about the BTX450 that makes it something you should buy?
Compact Size
The BTX450 is a small speaker. Not one of those tiny portable speakers that sound like tin cans but more like a mini sound bar. This compact size makes it really useful for putting together a deskspace as I have done. This size also allows you to take advantage of its battery and go out on a trip using the BTX450 as large portable speaker.
3600 mAh Battery
Along with the small size, Kinivo has packed in a 3600 mAh battery that they claim will allow for up to 6 hours of continuous playback. This allows a sort of portability when coupled with the small size. Along with this, the speaker also acts as a battery pack. There is a USB port on the back that can be used to charge a mobile device with 1 amps of output. The charging is slow, but it works for trickle charging my phone overnight.
Raw Power
Despite the small size, this speaker does not disappoint. Most times, I find myself slamming the volume up button on speakers disappointed by the lack of volume coming out of the device. There is no such worries with the BTX450. In fact, I find myself rushing to go in the opposite direction with this speaker.
The sound output is ridiculously loud. I regularly keep it at 1/3 of max volume. The raw power of this speaker is just amazing and will do great for outside settings.
The Middle
Where the the BTX450 fall between good and bad?
Sound Quality
In my experience, and opinion, the BTX450 offers some lackluster sound. The sound volume itself is outstanding, but the quality of sound could be better. This definitely is not the speaker for audiophiles or the like.
The sound seems pretty level to me with no range sticking out specifically. For those who enjoy bass heavy music, they will most likely be disappointed with the sound. The redeeming factor is that the sound is perfect for watching videos. In my usage, I usually use it for watching Netflix or YouTube, but I switch out to my headset when I start listening to music.
USB Output
The USB output is a great addition, but it comes with some detrimental restrictions to its usage. The output is an inadequate 1 amp along that isn’t really useful for much. Along with that, you can only use the USB port to charge another device when you the BTX450 is plugged in itself. This makes the USB port useless as most users will probably have a surplus of additional chargers laying around. This is ranked as a middle instead of a bad because the port is still useful as a night time charger.
The Bad
Why should the BTX450 be avoided?
Lack of Controls
Honestly, I was a bit hard pressed to find something that was truly bad about this speaker. The BTX450 is a solid enough device. The only thing I wish it had were playback controls. There is no way to pause and play media through the speaker or forward and previous functionality. I would imagine that every Bluetooth speaker by now would have found the merit of having playback controls.
What is the point of being able to distance yourself from the playback device if you have to return to it in order to control the media? If these controls were added to the BTX450, I would be able to justify carrying it around with me. Without those controls, I will just be content with carrying a smaller speaker with my desired playback controls.
The Kinivo BTX450 retails for $69.99 through a variety of online sellers.
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Sony launches selfie-centric Xperia C4 and C4 Dual
After the Xperia C3, Sony has added two more selfie-centric handsets to its portfolio – the Xperia C4 and Xperia C4 Dual.
While Sony might be trying to cash in on the current selfie phenomenon, it only sports a 5-megapixel front camera in comparison to 8-megapixel and 10-megapixel ones that are in markets now-a-days.
Although the resolution of Xperia C4’s front camera may only be a lot, it is capable of fitting all your buddies in a snap with its wide-angle camera.
“Xperia C4 caters to consumers that want a smartphone that not only takes great photos, but also packs a punch. Benefiting from Sony’s camera expertise, the 5MP front-facing camera with wide-angle lens lets you capture perfect selfies, while its quality display and performance features provide an all-round advanced smartphone experience,” said Tony McNulty, Vice-President, Value Category Business Management at Sony Mobile Communications.
As far as the other specs are concerned, both phones feature a 5.5-inch FHD display, a 13-megapixel primary camera and a 64-bit octa-core MediaTek MTK6752 chipset clocked at 1.7 GHz. It has 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of expandable internal storage and 2,600mAh battery. Both the phones run Android 5.0 Lollipop out-of-the-box, and the Xperia C4 Dual has two SIM card slots.
Source: Sony blog
The post Sony launches selfie-centric Xperia C4 and C4 Dual appeared first on AndroidGuys.
Apple Preparing In-Store Pickup Option for Apple Watch
Apple is preparing to offer an in-store pickup option for the Apple Watch in the United States and other launch countries, listing the option as “available soon” on the Apple Online Store and Apple Store app. The new option remains grayed out on Apple’s website and app, making it unavailable to select, and Apple’s Reserve and Pickup system for the Apple Watch has yet to go live.
To date, Apple Watch orders have been taken exclusively online and shipped via UPS or other couriers to residential or business addresses, but soon customers will gain the option of ordering online and visiting a local Apple retail location for in-store pickup. Customers will be required to present a valid government-issued photo ID upon pickup, and must match the name on the reservation to pick up the product.
Apple originally planned to offer in-store pickup of the Apple Watch as early as April 24, although later decided to take orders exclusively online and ship to home, possibly due to limited supply resulting from faulty Taptic Engines. When in-store pickup for the Apple Watch becomes available, customers will be able to select a nearby Apple Store location of their choice to pick up the product.
G-Technology Review: Hands-on With the Rugged 1TB G-Drive ev ATC With Thunderbolt [Mac Blog]
G-Technology’s G-Drive ev ATC is its latest hard drive, offering Thunderbolt connectivity in an ultra protective package. Introduced at CES this year, the G-Drive ev ATC (ATC stands for All-Terrain Case) is shock/dust resistant, waterproof and pressure resistant, plus it offers 1TB of storage and Thunderbolt speeds.
Designed for users who need storage space that can be used in the field in suboptimal conditions, the G-Drive ev ATC will keep data safe in all kinds of environments. The ev ATC (which has an ev RaW 7200 RPM hard drive inside) is also compatible with company’s Evolution series, including the G-Drive ev and G-Drive ev SSD, so hard drives can be swapped in and out of the rugged enclosure.
What’s in the Box?
The G-Drive ev ATC includes one inner 1TB G-Drive ev RaW, the rugged outer casing, and a USB to Micro-B cable for using the hard drive with your Mac when it’s not inserted into the enclosure with the Thunderbolt cable. It also ships with a small instruction manual to walk you through removing the inner drive from the outer casing and swapping it into other G-Technology products if desired.
Design and Features
There are two major parts to the G-Drive ev ATC: the hard plastic and rubber all-terrain case and the inner 1TB hard drive. The outer shell is constructed from black plastic with blue rubber accents at the corners and on the top and bottom to provide cushioning should it accidentally fall. It feels like a solid, quality product that’s going to stand up to abuse.
It’s branded with the company’s signature “G” logo and it has an LED at the top to let you know when it’s plugged in and active. A built-in Thunderbolt cable tucks around the perimeter of the drive and is covered with a blue rubber cap to keep dust and water out. One minor downside to the hard drive here — the rubber cap is flimsy and it feels like it could rip off with rough handling, and when subjected to a water test, a bit of water leaked in (it remained usable after the water dried).
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Google searching from your desktop is officially old skool
That people might favor a connected mobile device over a clunky old desktop isn’t news. Even in nations where a big boxy computer has long been a thing (unlike, say, in developing nations). Perhaps inevitably, then, Jerry Dischler — VP of Product Management, Google — just revealed that “as of today” more searches are originating from smartphones than PCs in at least 10 countries — and the US is one of ’em. This is more significant given that Google likely doesn’t include tablets, either (so it’s just phones). Google stopped short of breaking that sign-of-the-times tidbit down any further, but did mention that the trend includes Canada and Japan, too. Is this all that surprising, given we knew that the number of connected phones in people’s hands was swelling? Perhaps not, but it does shed light on why search’s number one player recently shuffled up its hallowed algorithms to favor mobile friendly sites. And, when Google changes the inner working of search, the internet tends to follow.
Filed under: Cellphones, Google
Source: Google AdWords blog
Samsung’s Galaxy S6 uses ‘several’ different camera sensors
When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S6, you might have noticed that the company stopped touting its in-house ISOCELL camera tech. Was it using relying on someone else’s sensor instead? As it turns out, the answer is yes… sort of. The Korean firm has confirmed owners’ discoveries that the rear sensor is alternately made by Samsung or Sony. There are “several different vendors” making S6 cameras, a spokesperson says, although there’s no mention of how Samsung distributes those components. Not that you’ll need to be worried, apparently. The company insists that they all meet “strict global quality and performance standards,” and SamMobile has conducted tests showing that the practical differences are slight. In short, you’ll likely get quality photos regardless of whose imaging hardware is under the hood.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung, Sony
Source: XDA-Developers
Google will spend $150 million this year to diversify its workforce
Last year, Google released internal data revealing that almost all of its workforce was male, and nearly all of them were from either white or Asian backgrounds. In an attempt to make itself more diverse, the company is putting $150 million into programs to help increase the number of female, Black and Hispanic employees. In the run up to having this year’s figures released, Google’s Nancy Lee sat down with USA Today to talk about what the search engine is aiming for.
Part of the project has been to increase the number of schools where Google recruits new engineers from, including Alabama A&M and the University of Missouri-Columbia. The company is also grabbing some employees’ 20 percent time to address unconscious bias, an issue that Lee believes will improve the office culture.
The search engine is also doing its best to encourage women into STEM careers with projects like the Made to Code campaign. There’s also the fact that Google has teamed up with ABC to get female characters from both Miles from Tomorrowland and The Fosters to provide a positive role model for young kids.
As Lee herself says, institutional changes on this scale will all take time and it’d be unreasonable to expect wholesale changes in just a year. However, between this, Intel’s pledge to achieve full representation by 2020 and Apple’s commitment to financially support minority scholarships, the future’s looking even better.
Via: USA Today
Source: Google
Hulu is reportedly making a TV series based on ‘Myst’
It’s a good day for point-and-click fans. After the news that you can now play Grim Fandango Remastered on your morning commute, it seems like the ’90s classic Myst is getting its own TV series. According to Deadline, a drama series that explores the origin of the game’s eponymous island is coming to streaming service Hulu. For those that don’t know, Myst was a huge hit in its day; its innovative storytelling methods and stunning graphics made it the best-selling PC game of the decade.
The show is being reportedly being developed by Legendary Television, with Evan Daugherty (writer of Snow White and the Huntsman, Divergent and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) handling the script and Matt Tolmach (who’s responsible for the most-recent Spider-Man movies and the upcoming Sinister Six) producing. Those names — or more specifically the projects they’ve worked on — might not fill you with confidence, but if there’s a love for the source material, this might turn out okay.
Source: Deadline
Mophie’s latest iPhone battery case is waterproof, too
Mophie’s cases are a popular choice for adding some extra minutes to your mobile device’s battery life. While the company already had both charging and storage options for the iPhone 6, it how offers protection from water damage, too. The H2PROTM accessory not only packs in an additional 2,750 mAh battery, but it’s waterproof as well. An IP-68 rated Otterbox-esque design also protects the handset from dirt and drops with easy access to those side-mounted controls and a mute switch. Worried about Touch ID? Mophie’s scratch-resistant membrane that covers the screen will still allow you to leverage that feature. What’s more, priority-charging tech makes sure your phone charges before the case when plugging in is unavoidable. If you’re itchin’ to snag one, the Mophie H2PROTM is available for pre-order now for $130 and it’s schedule to ship later this month. Unfortunately, there’s no word on an iPhone 6 Plus option just yet.
Filed under: Cellphones, Misc, Mobile
Source: Mophie (1), (2)
Racing to June 1: The fight to control the Patriot Act
If Defcon is the cultural Comic-Con of security conferences, then RSA is more like the business-focused Game Developers Conference (GDC), though largely packed with government-corporate attendees.
At the midpoint of a long day during last month’s RSA San Francisco 2015, the largest security conference in the United States (with a record-breaking 33,000 in attendance), Congressman Mike Rogers took the stage to debate in favor of renewing the Patriot Act’s Section 215, sometimes called the “library records” provision. “Renewing the Patriot Act” at RSA was about one of our nation’s most pivotal public pain points in recent history — Section 215′s facilitation of bulk telephone record collection. Despite the high-profile nature of this debate and its critical timing, it was a bizarrely toothless, kind of clueless, softball argument that somehow managed to completely avoid discussing why the renewal of this section of the Patriot Act, right now, is such a big deal.
Simply put, 215 allows investigators to obtain “any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents and other items),” as long as the records are sought “in connection with” a terror investigation.
In 2013, when The Guardian published a leaked court order provided by disillusioned former government contractor Edward Snowden requiring the Verizon Business Network to hand over massive amounts of users’ phone records to the National Security Agency vis à vis the Patriot Act’s Section 215, nightmares about unchecked domestic spying went to center stage, and suddenly everyone was talking about metadata.
215 allows investigators to obtain “any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents and other items).”
During the debate, the congressman was keen to gloss over the topic of metadata. This data collection, he explained, was in email, and was only collected as the “to-from” as if “on the front of an envelope.”
His debate opponent onstage, Google Director of Law Enforcement and Information Security Richard Salgado, didn’t question the Congressman’s egregiously off-base talking point — though later, an audience member did, reminding Rogers that metadata was much more than that.
Rogers, it should be noted, while a worthy selection to argue for reinstating the Patriot Act, has a habit of leaving information out when he talks about NSA and Patriot Act surveillance programs. It’s also not the first time he’s publicly conflated the Patriot Act’s Section 215 (phone) and a different section, FISA’s 702 (email).
Fear of the unknown
Because the exact government interpretation of Section 215 is classified, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Order published in The Guardian showed for the first time just how it’s being used in an everyday capacity.
According to The Guardian‘s 2013 exposé, 215 facilitated an order that required Verizon to share its records — “telephony metadata” on calls made both in and out of the US — with the NSA “on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of the order.” Sprint and AT&T were also implicated in the data-handover scheme, bringing the total of affected Americans well into the hundreds of millions. With the number of customers totaling 120 million at AT&T, 102 million at Verizon and 55 million at Sprint, if you’re an American, then this means you and most everyone you know had personal data indiscriminately collected in a vast government database somewhere.
Justifiably, you might have concerns about the who, what, when, why and how pertaining to information about your life you didn’t even know was being collected. Is it safe? Are there creeps with access to it? Will you end up in a program you didn’t know about? How private is that data? Who is it shared with? Does it violate my rights? Is it really what our trusted officials say it is, just like information available on the front of an envelope?
It turned out that the phone-record metadata sweeps trickling down from Section 215 do indeed include Rogers’ “to-from” data in a call: the time and duration of a call, the “to-from” phone numbers and any calling card numbers. In 2013, the order was published revealing the shared phone data also includes the trunk identifier (narrowing down the physical location of the caller), the IMEI number (the phone’s unique identifier) and the IMSI number (the SIM card’s unique identifier).
The Guardian noted at the time that when this metadata is combined with publicly available information, it’s not difficult to reveal “someone’s name, address, driver’s license, credit history, social security number and more.”
It’s unlikely that the debate at RSA would have happened without the events of June 2013, or that the wider Patriot Act-renewal debate would have become as emotional, venomous and headline-gathering as it is now.
The Patriot Act is actually a vast and sprawling body of work, and just like the Department of Homeland Security, it was thrown together quickly in the wake of 9/11 and immediately implemented with minimal debate and little congressional oversight on October 26, 2001.
Officially called the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, it authorized what the US Department of Justice describes as “modest, incremental changes in the [existing] law” that have become crucial for protecting Americans from global terrorist organizations.
The Patriot Act is a sprawling body of work thrown together quickly in the wake of 9/11 with minimal debate.
Insisting that Congress was working with what was actually already there, the DoJ said that Congress simply “took existing legal principles and retrofitted them” to protect Americans through expanded surveillance and information sharing.
The Patriot Act’s most controversial provisions — though by no means the only provisions of concern to critics — included indefinite detention of immigrants, expansion of the government’s ability to secretly search and surveil without a court order (including the disclosure of electronic communications to law enforcement agencies) and expanded definitions of “terrorist activity.”
With all this in mind, it’s easy to see why, on one end of the debate, the Patriot Act is likened to authoritarian systems of surveillance and repression (George Orwell) — while on the other side, we can envision a government struggling to balance risk, security, its obligations to privacy and an institutional inability to move as fast as technology, let alone as nimbly as its attackers.
But after 2013′s disclosures about mass surveillance, suddenly it wasn’t just conspiracy theorists and fringe civil liberties groups talking about the US government spying on unaware Americans through bulk collection of phone and electronic communications.
Lawmakers lashed out emotionally at critics, and the act’s author expressed a disturbing regret. The Patriot Act’s original author, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said that what had happened with the Patriot Act was “a failure of oversight” and told The Washington Post that it was, essentially, a mistake. “I can say that if Congress knew what the NSA had in mind in the future immediately after 9/11, the Patriot Act never would have passed, and I never would have supported it.”
Referring to Section 215, Sensenbrenner told The Hill, when squaring off against Rogers over reforming the act, “There is no limit — apparently, according to the NSA — on what they can collect. And that has got to be stopped,” he said.
Likely referring to the renewal of 215’s provisions in 2011 by Congress and the Obama Administration, as well as its previous renewal by the Bush Administration in 2006, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told The Wall Street Journal in 2013, “Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn’t anything that is brand-new.” He added that the phone-data program has “worked to prevent” terrorist attacks.
Unfortunately for those who just wanted the attention to go away, “everyone” was not calming down. “Everyone” was talking about the NSA, the Patriot Act and the meaning of “metadata.” Enterprise organizations and small companies alike changed their security practices. Information-security communities were blown away — and take it from me, this is no easy feat. Trust in the US government and American enterprise services spiraled downward, achieving a newfound status of the most dark and damaging kind.
What was learned about Section 215 in 2013 even resonated into pop culture. The entire theme of the 2014 film Captain America: The Winter Soldier was the American willingness to surrender freedom for security — and the grave consequences this brings. Crystallizing American disillusionment in the most straightforward of ways, it was a uniquely un-American superhero movie — about America’s own emblematic hero — whose ideology is shattered by an American government gone out of control. It’s safe to say that some Americans could relate.
Now, provisions in the Patriot Act governing its particular raw nerves of metadata surveillance and bulk collection of phone and internet records expire on June 1st, unless they receive Congressional reauthorization — and it’s the first time a renewal has come up since everyone found out how the surveillance sausage was made.
The race to June 1st: posturing and compromise
Last month, current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., along with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-NC, attempted to seize control of the act’s future by introducing a bill that would extend the provisions unchanged through 2020 — invoking a rule to have the bill skip the vetting process and go straight to the floor for a vote.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., responded in a same-day statement saying, “This tone-deaf attempt to pave the way for five and a half more years of unchecked surveillance will not succeed. I will oppose any reauthorization of Section 215 that does not contain meaningful reforms.”
Two bills, no real changes, a blindfolded fight over the Patriot Act and a bad feeling about everything.
This week, the House Judiciary Committee reached a bipartisan agreement on a different bill, one intended to counter McConnell’s play, and it will also go straight to the floor, skipping review by the Senate’s Intelligence Committee, whose current chairman is Burr.
The USA Freedom Act (watered down from a previous version) narrows the type of records collected, and adds oversight provisions, but doesn’t end bulk data collection. Some committee members did press to end the bulk-collection practice, and to add provisions to require warrants, but were talked out of it, ostensibly in lieu of making the bill more passable on the floor.
Here’s where we stand with Patriot Act Section 215: two bills, no real changes, a blindfolded fight over the Patriot Act and a bad feeling about everything.
As Patriot Act allegories go, the Captain America reference isn’t actually that far off. It appears we have a roster of lawmakers awakening after decades of suspended animation who can’t quite grasp a world of quicksilver technology, a public that informs itself — and an emergent belief that the biggest threat to the personal safety and liberty of Americans might just be the ones running the show.
[Image credits: US Capitol Building (rrodrickbeiler via Getty); RSA Banners (RSA); NSA offices (AFP/Getty Images); Protestors (Associated Press); Mitch McConnell (Associated Press); George W. Bush signs the USA Patriot Act (MMCT via Getty Images)]
Filed under: Internet
AIVAnet 