Apple, Google, and Microsoft Among Companies Signing New White House Climate Pledge
Apple will join twelve other companies from across the country today at the White House in support of the American Business Act on Climate Pledge, which aims to tackle climate change head-on thanks to the backing of partners like Apple.
The new pledge will cut nearly 6 billion tons of carbon pollution through the year 2030, “an amount equivalent to taking all the cars in the United States off the road for more than 4 years.” Apple’s addition to the pledge doesn’t appear to include any projects debuting exclusively for the new initiative, but the company will seemingly continue to heavily support a positive environmental message, now in partnership with the White House.
Apple, already running all of its U.S. operations on 100% renewable energy, will bring an estimated 280 megawatts of clean power generation online by the end of 2016 through investments in Arizona, California, Nevada, North Carolina, Oregon and Sichuan Province, China. Since 2011, Apple has reduced carbon emissions from its global corporate facilities, data centers and retail stores by 48%.
The other companies signing the pledge include: Alcoa, Bank of America, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, Cargill, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, Google, Microsoft, PepsiCo, UPS, and Walmart. By signing on as a partner, the companies are voicing support for a “strong” outcome for the climate negotiations in Paris this December, and promising an “ongoing commitment” to positive environmental action.
In total, the American Business Act on Climate Pledge amounts to about $140 billion in environmental investments, with all of the participating companies estimated to generate more than 1,600 megawatts of new renewable energy. As the White House points out, the partnerships announced today “are only the beginning,” with a second round of pledges expected to be announced sometime this fall.
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
LinkedIn brings back contact export feature after user backlash
LinkedIn has discovered that folks really don’t like waiting for their contact info. A couple of days ago, the company removed its CSV and VCF file export tool, supposedly to discourage third-parties from “scraping” user data. You could still get the data by requesting an archive from the company, but that process took up to 72 hours. LinkedIn’s business-oriented community was not thrilled, so the company quickly backpedaled, saying “we’ve heard you loud and clear… effective immediately, we have turned the CSV download link back on.” However, once it gets the wait time for archival requests down to “within minutes,” the feature will be turned off again.
Filed under: Internet, Software
Via: Slashgear
Source: LinkedIn
Brits can now pass their Facebook profile on after they die
When a loved one passes away, their Facebook profile page can become an important place for friends and family to remember them by. The company already offers memorialized accounts, which shows the word “remembering” next to their name and stops anyone from logging in, but now it’s going a step further with legacy contacts. The feature is rolling out in Europe today after its US debut in February, and allows users to choose a friend or relative to manage their account after they’ve died. Once activated, this person can write a post at the top of their timeline — for instance, to share details about a memorial service — respond to friend requests and update their profile and cover photos. Users can also give legacy accounts permission to download an archive of their profile, including photos and posts, for safe keeping should they wish for their account to be deleted.
[Image credit: shutterstock]
Filed under: Internet, Facebook
Via: Telegraph
Android flaw lets attackers into your phone through MMS videos
If you’re an Android user, you’d better hope that a stranger doesn’t send you a video message in the near future — it might compromise your phone. Security researchers at Zimperium have discovered an exploit that lets attackers take control if they send a malware-laden MMS video. The kicker is that you may not even need to do anything to trigger the payload, depending on your text messaging app of choice. While the stock Messenger app won’t do anything until you see the message, Hangouts’ pre-processing for media attachments could put you at risk before you’re even aware that there’s a message waiting.
Google is already on top of the flaw, and has pushed out a fix to its hardware partners. However, whether or not you’ll get that fix will depend on your phone’s manufacturer. Zimperium tells Forbes that the Nexus 6 and Blackphone are already safe against some of the related flaws (other Nexus devices are likely in a similar boat), but more common third-party phones from Samsung, HTC and others are typically still vulnerable. It’s also unclear as to whether or not these companies will deliver fixes to their relatively recent devices in a timely manner, or at all. Depending on when you got your handset, it might remain exposed.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Google
Via: Forbes
Source: NPR
When and where to watch the OnePlus 2 Live Stream launch
As you’re probably well aware, OnePlus will be live streaming the launch of its new flagship smartphone, the OnePlus 2, later today (July 27th). As one would expect with OnePlus though, the launch isn’t exactly conventional. OnePlus gave away a bunch of VR cardboard glasses a few weeks ago, in preparation for streaming the OnePlus 2 launch in 3D. But when and where can you catch the live stream event?
OnePlus has released an app for its fans to watch the live stream in all its VR glory, but if you don’t have cardboard VR glasses, don’t worry. OnePlus has stated that there will be a cardboard-free 360 experience built into the OnePlus 2 launch app. There’s still a fair bit of time between now and launch, so if you are handy with a piece of card and some scissors, you could always make your own VR glasses, following the directions given here. You can also download the OnePlus 2 Launch app from here. Let us know your thoughts about the interactive launch in the comments below.
Come comment on this article: When and where to watch the OnePlus 2 Live Stream launch
Epic App Battles of Android: Pandora vs. Slacker
Welcome to the firsts installment of Epic App Battles of Android: Music Edition! Here is our first epic match up!
In the blue corner, we have Pandora, founded in 2000 with 100 Million Downloads and a user rating of 4.4
In the red corner, we have Slacker, founded in 2006 with 10 Million Downloads and a user rating of 4.2
Who will win this epic battle between the legendary titans? Read on and find out.
Round 1: App design
Pandora brings to the table a clean, white, high-resolution user interface that is present when searching for stations, viewing your feed, profile, and adjusting the applications settings menu. At first glance, the interface is overwhelming due to the multiple tabs and shortcut menus.
Once you take the time to create stations, which is very simple to do, all of your stations will be listed under the stations tab. The stations tab is probably the most important aspect of Pandora because it allows you to choose the station you want to listen to. It also gives you the option to select multiple stations and shuffle them together into one station. After a station is selected the user interface changes to a gradient hue of navy blue and displays cover art of the song as the song plays.
The ability to switch from the now playing screen back to the Pandora homepage to view your profile which is Pandora’s version of a Timeline, the Feed, and Settings tab creates a comfortable user experience and is very easy to use.
Rating: 7.5
Slacker takes a totally different approach to its user interface. The homepage of Slacker has a mix between white and variations of gray triangles creating a high-resolution wallpaper background. The header and footer menus of the app are deep blacks that, when viewed against the wallpaper background, gives the application a beautiful and monochromatic design.
Slacker’s ‘Now Playing’ menu is simply gorgeous. The menu displays the current song’s album art while behind the album art is a background of the same cover art just with a low opacity giving a sleek appearance. That combined with the creatively designed play, skip, and back icon buttons creates an ascetically appealing. Switching between Slacker’s menus are hidden gems. The ‘gems’ are creative transitions that flip, flop, and fly around like slides of a PowerPoint presentation. The snappy transitions, intuitive menus, and crisp, rock-star like graphics allow Slacker to have a bit of swagger.
Rating: 9.5
Round 1:
Pandora – 7.5
Slacker – 9.5
Round 2: Features
Pandora, which is pegged as a music discovery app, takes a simplistic approach to music-streaming. Pandora attempts to create an intimate music experience for you, based on the songs and artists that you love. Search for Lecrae or maybe Justin Timberlake, and Pandora’s algorithm engine built off the Music Genome Project creates a playlist loaded with comparable artists from a library of nearly a million songs.
What this does is allow you to listen to the artist you like and discover an artist that you might have never heard of but creates similar music. The free version of Pandora is limited to 6 skips per hour and has ads and commercials throughout your listening experience. Upgrading to Pandora One, the subscription service, enables fewer interruptions and removes ads as well as other perks like more daily skips.
What We Like about Pandora
- Ability to get introduced to new music
- Sleeper Time – Set a timer for how long you would like to listen from 15, 30, or 60 minutes. This is great for listening before going to bed.
- Alarm Clock – Set an alarm time, and you can wake up to your favorite artist station instead of a pesky rooster or alarm tone.
What We Don’t Like about Pandora
- The lack of control over music content. You only have the ability to pick the artist station not actually listen to that particular artist music.
- As an Android app, Pandora for Android has a good design, but it doesn’t feel like an Android application it feels like an iPhone app placed into the Android ecosystem. We would like to see them actually create Pandora for Android using Google’s Material Design guidelines.
- When you find a song you like you can’t save it to a playlist, replay it, or save it for offline playback like a lot of other streaming music apps.
- The free version only allows 6 skips per hour.
Rating: 8.5
Slacker is a Discovery and On Demand service which, for the most part, is relatively unknown compared to other heavyweights in the streaming music category like Pandora, Spotify, and iHeartRadio. Although Slacker seeks to change that by giving you everything, including the kitchen sink.
Slacker is a hands-on music experience for those seeking more control. The free version of Slacker is quite limited compared to what you can unlock with the paid versions. The free version of Slacker allows you to search for your favorite artist, but only allows you to play similar titles, not the actual artist. Also in the free version you are limited to 6 skips per hour. Much like what Pandora offers.
You do have the ability to listen to curated playlist from genres, moods, seasons, etc. Although Slacker Plus and Premium boasts a music library of over 2.5 million songs and gives you control over creating a playlist, and saving songs offline to listen to when there is no available internet connection. One more amazing feature is the ability to listen to entire albums and searching for song titles.
What We Like about Slacker
- Beautifully designed user interface, crispy sleek graphics
- Ability to save songs to favorite playlist and even save to your device with no internet connection available
- Search for songs of an artist by demand
- Ability to listen to entire Albums playback songs
- Ability to stop, fast forward, rewind, and even repeat songs
What We Don’t Like about Slacker
- Free version is plagued by constant on screen Advertisements
- Can only skip 6 songs per hour on the free version
- Doesn’t have the option to set a timer to allow the app to turn off by itself
Rating: 8.5
Round 2:
Pandora – 8.5
Slacker – 8.5
Round 3: Price
Pandora’s Free Version: Ads, commercials, and limited to 6 skips per hour
Pandora’s Pandora One Subscription: $4.99 per month or $36 for the year upgrades you to no ads and fewer interruptions
Rating: 8
Slacker’s Free Version: Ads, commercials, limited listening time, and 6 skips per hour per station
Slacker’s Radio Plus: $3.99 per month, ad-free listening, unlimited song skips, offline stations for data-free listening
Slacker’s Premium: $9.99 per month, play songs and albums on demand, create custom playlists, listen to offline playlists and albums, unlimited skips, ad-free listening
Rating: 9
Round 3:
Pandora – 8
Slacker – 9
After 3 rounds of head to head action between Pandora and Slacker, we have to take it to the judges score cards. It was a close fight but Slacker prevailed with a score of 27 points compared to Pandora’s 24.
Final Score:
Slacker – 27
Pandora – 24
Summary
It seems that Pandora, being a veteran, got too comfortable in its place in the streaming audio market, allowing other apps to encroach on its territory. Now we have other services that offer the same features as Pandora and more.
Before this battle I had never used Slacker, and I really felt no needed to because I have been a loyal fan of Spotify for the last 2 years and have paid my monthly dues faithfully. Slacker is an extremely well designed app that offers an array of interesting and useful features. It is also easy to use and created a fun user experience.
Tell us what you thought about the battle by leaving comments below. Which streaming music app do you use?
The post Epic App Battles of Android: Pandora vs. Slacker appeared first on AndroidGuys.
OnePlus 2 invites launched, attracts over 235,000 reservations
Ahead of its OnePlus 2 launch in under 24 hours’ time, OnePlus has opened invites for its new smartphone and like the OnePlus One, demand looks to be incredible with the new handset living up to the billing of its predecessor.
The company claims that its invite system has been improved since the first handset last year with 30 to 50 times’ more inventory at launch and it may need them as on the reservation list for invites, the company has hit over 230,000 registrations in 24 hours. Based on some feverish refreshing of the page, the company has made it seem that they are receiving around 300 reservations every minute and the number seems to be rising; in the time it took to write this post, the reservation list swelled from 226,000 to 235,000 people.
According to the company, this is just a reservation list to have the chance to get an invite if any are left unused; think of it as a waiting list for the invite system. Like the OnePlus One, the quickest way to get an invite to buy the new handset is to ask someone who has bought one as they’ll be able to share an invite, although invites won’t be available straight away.
OnePlus One in video:
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The OnePlus 2 is set to be the 2016 flagship killer with future proofed specs that are rumoured to include a 5.5-inch Quad HD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor and 4GB RAM, with the OnePlus 2 one of the only handsets to offer 4GB RAM. Also expected to be onboard is a 13MP rear camera with laser autofocus and f/2.0 aperture and a home button beneath the display that sports a fingerprint sensor like the Samsung Galaxy S6.
There’s just a few short hours until the OnePlus 2 is announced and we’ll be there bringing you our hands on and all the information as it happens. Are you going to register for an invite or does the handset not appeal to you? Let us know your views in the comments below!
Beijing Police Shut Down Large-Scale Factory That Made Over 41,000 Counterfeit iPhones
Beijing police have shut down a large iPhone counterfeiting ring within the city that had managed to produce more than 41,000 fake versions of the flagship smartphone, some of which even managed to reach the United States (via Reuters). All told, the ring’s counterfeit production had grown to be worth as much as 120 million yuan (about $19 million).
The police have arrested a total of nine suspects thought to be involved directly in the counterfeiting operation, all due to a combined effort to enforce stricter counterfeit and intellectual property laws in China. Of the nine arrested were a 43-year-old man and his 40-year-old wife, whom police believe ran the counterfeit scam under a gadget maintenance shop front before the operation was raided in May.
The information is just coming out today, however, thanks to a social media post from the public security bureau in Beijing, which said the couple had set up the factory in January, beginning with as many as six assembly lines and “hundreds” of workers. The raid, which took place on May 14 thanks to a tip from United States authorities, ended with the police seizing as many as 1,400 counterfeit smartphones and “large quantities” of accessories.
The counterfeit iPhone — and now Apple Watch — market has grown in China since the device’s debut, and only became more prevalent a few years back when entire counterfeit Apple Stores were discovered by a blogger who posted photos of the false retail stores online. China remains a big target for Apple, with the company stating during last week’s earning call that the country is positioned to be its “largest market in the future.” It’s already begun to affect changes in the design of its products, with Tim Cook confirming that Chinese consumer tastes are the main reason behind the new gold color options of the iPhone, MacBook, and Apple Watch lines.
Apple to Expand Retail Presence in India With 500 Authorized Mobility Resellers
Following a focus on expanding its presence in the greater China area, sources speaking with NDTV Gadgets have confirmed Apple is looking to increase its foothold in India as well through the launch of a new retail store program. The new initiative — dubbed the Authorized Mobility Resellers program — will reportedly see the company open 500 retail store locations across 12 cities in India.
The stores will showcase a heavier focus on Apple’s mobile offerings, like the iPhone and iPad, along with “related third-party accessories.” Apple has already signed up over 100 partners it wants to work with on the AMR program and has even begun to earmark specific locations it wants for the new retail sites. The company will also allow the program to discount iPhones below retail price, according to the information gained from NDTV Gadgets.
Apple products are rarely sold at a discount across the world and there was a time when India was pretty much the same. However, in recent years Apple has changed its distribution model and has been happy to turn a blind eye to retailers discounting the iPhone, MacBook Air, and other products as it looks to gain marketshare. NDTV Gadgets has learnt that Apple will follow a similar model with AMR partners, which means they will be able to sell below MRP.
Apple will hire a contractor to be sure that all of the sites adhere to the company’s strict guidelines regarding size and design, but afterwards the company will hand back over reigns to the third-party resellers it’s partnering with to operate and run the stores. The exact timeline of the AMR program remains unclear, however, with no word from Apple on whether its presence in the country could be seen as early as this year or not.
Start the school year on the right foot with a new Chromebook
Believe it or not, Summer is almost over. That means it’s time to get started on getting supplies and everything ready for the school season. In today’s day and age, school supplies aren’t just pens, pencils, and notebooks. Now we have technology to consider, and Google has kept that in mind with a back-to-school sale.
Google is running a back-to-school promotion that takes up to $30 off select Chromebooks for everyone to consider. The three Chromebooks that are on sale directly from Google are:
These devices range from $159.99 all the way up to $319.99, so there are devices for just about every budget. All the mean while, each device offers something a little bit different, while still providing you a great Chrome OS experience.
Google has also cut the price of their Nexus Player, and has taken $20 off the normally priced $99 device. Finally, the Google is offering a special when you purchase two Chromecasts. If you purchase two Chromecasts, you save $15 and get a free Movie Rental from Google Play on the house.
Let us know if you’re ready for school shopping to start, and what devices you are looking to get your school year started on the right foot.
Source: Google Store
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AIVAnet 