Speed up the week with these fast car wallpapers
We all like looking at things we can’t have. Well at least I do, for some strange reason. A lot of the things I want but can’t have are the various sports cars that are out tearing the roads up. Today we are bringing you some wallpapers for some cars that will make your phone just look fast, no matter what device you are running.
If you see a wallpaper that belongs to you and you would like to receive credit, I would love to give it to you! Just drop a comment in the section provided below with some proof (You know, just so we don’t have people claiming things that are not theirs…) So, please choose those that you like and enjoy!
The post Speed up the week with these fast car wallpapers appeared first on AndroidGuys.
‘Plasmonics’ could lead to super-fast optic communications
Researchers at Purdue University have developed a new kind of material that could improve the speed of optical communications by as much as 5000 times the current state of the art. The material is made of aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) and it is able to change the amount of light it reflects by up to 40 percent while consuming a fraction of the power that conventional optical semiconductors consume. By reflecting more or less light, the material can encode and transmit data. What’s more, this material operates in the near-infrared spectrum range, which is what is most commonly used in optical communications.
Using this material, the team developed an optical transistor. It performs the same signal amplifying function that conventional transistors do, just for light instead of electricity. Semiconductors work by moving electrons from a baseline valence band to a higher energy state called the conduction band. When the electrons move up, they leave “holes” in the valence band which they eventually fill when the electron moves back down from the conduction band. A transistor’s switching speed is based on how quickly a semiconductor’s electrons can complete this cycle. And with AZO, that cycle takes just 350 femtoseconds (that’s 1.0 × 10-15 seconds) to complete — about as much time as it takes for light to pass through a sheet of paper. That’s really, really fast. “We were surprised that it was this fast,” lead author and Purdue doctoral student Nathaniel Kinsey said in a statement. With speeds like that, the team believes devices can be built that are at least 10 times faster than current silicon-based electronics.
Filed under:
Science
Source:
Purdue University
Tags: AZO, opticalcommunications, optics, plasmonics, Purdue, PurdueUniversity, semiconductor, transistor
$18 million up for grabs in this week’s ‘Dota 2’ championships
The International is back and bigger than ever. The 2015 championships for Dota 2, Valve’s massively popular MOBA, take off today in the “main event” stage, beginning with three matches between LGD Gaming and Team Empire. In total, 16 teams have a shot at winning The International when it comes to a close on Saturday, August 8th. There’s a total of $18 million up for grabs, with payouts ranging from $54,000 for 16th place and $6.5 million for first — and these figures should rise before the end of the tournament, since it’s funded via ongoing purchases of the Compendium, a package that offers players in-game goodies at $10 or $27 a pop. Twenty-five percent of all Compendium sales go straight to The International’s prize pool. Watch The International’s official, live coverage below (heads up, it autoplays).
Last year, the Dota 2 International championships doled out $11 million to winning teams and brought in more than 20 million viewers, with a peak concurrent audience of 2 million. Last year’s winning team, Newbee, took home more than $5 million. This year, the championship will be streamed on Twitch, YouTube and WatchESPN. Welcome to sports in the digital age.
Source:
Dota 2
Tags: championships, dota2, dota2championships, hdpostcross, TheInternational, TheInternational2015, TheInternationalDota2
Researchers inject oil into cells and create little lasers
The Massachusetts General Hospital research team that lit up human cells with the help of jellyfish genes a few years ago are back with a more advanced version of the technology. This new version forgoes the complicated external mirror setup in favor of injectable oil droplets impregnated with fluorescent dye. This is the same basic idea as what a team from St Andrews University recently created, except that the plastic bead that served as the their laser’s resonating chamber is now an oil droplet. While the technology isn’t ready for therapeutic applications just yet, it does hold a great deal of promise. The problem with conventional cellular markers and dye is that they have a broad emission spectrum which can make it difficult to spot the marked cells amidst the rest of the tissue. But with these miniature lasers, doctors will be able to mark and track individual cells no matter where they are in the body. The team recently published their findings in Nature Photonics.
a dye-impregnated fat cell – Massachusetts General Hospital
[Image Credit: Top – Arbi Babakhanians, inline: Matjaž Humar/Seok Hyun Yun]
Filed under:
Science
Source:
Nature Photonics
Tags: biology, cells, dye, lasers, MassachusettsGeneralHospital, oil, optics, photonics, tracking
PlayStation Now game streaming officially arrives on Vita and PS TV
If you’ve been itchin’ to give PlayStation Now’s streaming a go on your gaming handheld, the wait is over. The subscription service officially arrived on the PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV, delivering access to over 125 games on those two devices. PlayStation Now had been available on the Vita and PlayStation TV in beta form for months, but now it’s making a proper debut after hitting the PS3 back in May. In addition to equipping two more gaming gadgets with the service, five new titles are being added this month. Joining the library of titles in August are Dynasty Warriors 8, MX vs. ATV Supercross, Bomberman Ultra, The Last Guy and, most importantly, God of War III. With new games being added on the regular and Sony offering newcomers a free one-week trial, there’s really now excuse for PlayStation owners to take the service for a test drive.
[Image credit: Getty Images]
Source:
PlayStation Blog
Tags: gamestreaming, gaming, hdpostcross, playstationnow, playstationtv, playstationvita, psnow, psvita, sony, streaming, subscription, vita
Nokia sells HERE mapping business to Audi, BMW, and Daimler for $3 billion
The deal that would send Nokia’s HERE mapping business to three German automakers is now official. On Monday, the Finnish company announced that it would sell HERE to Audi, BMW, and Daimler for around $3 billion.
Audi, BMW, and Daimler will be able to implement HERE’s technology in their vehicles as soon as next year. Each automaker will be able to make a transition away from Google and Apple’s offerings, allowing more flexibility when it comes to tailoring the experience of a connected car. HERE’s real-time updates and parking data will also make it possible for the German automakers to increase the performance of self-driving cars.
Following the deal, Nokia will be split into two business entities. Nokia Networks and Nokia Technologies. Both will have completely separate goals and functions. Nokia Networks, which includes the Alcatel-Lucent acquisition, will focus on selling networking equipment. Nokia Technologies will be heavily invested in the research and development of future technologies.
The deal will officially close in the first half of 2016 and HERE’s mobile app is said to remain unaffected.
Source: Nokia
Come comment on this article: Nokia sells HERE mapping business to Audi, BMW, and Daimler for $3 billion
Amazon selects Staples as the Echo’s exclusive third-party retailer (with a catch)
Finally, Amazon’s Echo digital assistant is being offered through a third-party retailer. Amazon selected Staples to sell the Echo exclusively. The only catch is that Staples’ thousands of stores will not be selling the device, preventing anyone interested from entering their local Staples store and walking out with the Echo. Prospective buyers will have to stay online and go to the retailer’s site in order to make a purchase.
Only non-Prime members should be taking a look at purchasing the Echo through Staples. Otherwise, take advantage of Amazon’s membership services and receive free two-day shipping.
Come comment on this article: Amazon selects Staples as the Echo’s exclusive third-party retailer (with a catch)
First Firmware Worm Able to Infect Macs Created by Researchers
A team of researchers has created the first firmware worm that’s able to infect Macs, reports Wired. Building on “Thunderstrike” exploits uncovered earlier this year, the worm, dubbed “Thunderstrike 2,” infects Macs at the firmware level, making it nearly impossible to remove. Embedded into firmware, malware is resistant to firmware and software updates, able to block them entirely or reinstall itself at will.
The worm was created by security engineer Trammell Hudson, who first discovered the Thunderstrike exploits, and Xeno Kovah, owner of firmware security consultancy LegbaCore. When Thunderstrike made waves earlier this year, it was a limited proof-of-concept attack with no known presence in the wild, but Thunderstrike 2 demonstrates a real-world worm able to target Macs using the same general vulnerabilities.
Thunderstrike 2, unlike the first demonstration of Thunderstrike, is able to infect a Mac remotely through a malicious website or email. Once on a Mac, it’s able to spread itself to other Macs by hiding in the option ROM of peripheral devices like Apple’s own Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter, external SSDs, RAID controllers, and more. Once infected by a Mac that has the Thunderstrike 2 worm, the peripheral would go on to infect any other Mac it connects to.
“People are unaware that these small cheap devices can actually infect their firmware,” says Kovah. “You could get a worm started all around the world that’s spreading very low and slow. If people don’t have awareness that attacks can be happening at this level then they’re going to have their guard down and an attack will be able to completely subvert their system.”
Removing malware embedded into a Mac’s firmware would need to be done at the hardware level, making it particularly dangerous. According to the researchers, Apple has not done enough to fix the vulnerabilities that leave Macs open to these kind of attacks.
“Some vendors like Dell and Lenovo have been very active in trying to rapidly remove vulnerabilities from their firmware,” Kovah notes. “Most other vendors, including Apple as we are showing here, have not. We use our research to help raise awareness of firmware attacks, and show customers that they need to hold their vendors accountable for better firmware security.”
Kovah and Hudson have notified Apple about the Thunderstrike 2 vulnerabilities, but thus far, Apple’s only fixed one of five security flaws and introduced a partial fix for a second. Three of the vulnerabilities have not yet been patched, but it’s likely Apple is working to get the flaws fixed in an upcoming security update.
More information on Kovah and Hudson’s research and the Thunderstrike 2 exploit can be found in a lengthy report over at Wired.
Vivid Games’ ultra-realistic Real Boxing 2 will fight its way to Android later this year
If you were a fan of Vivid Games’ ultra-realistic Real Boxing game on Android, you’ll be happy to hear that the followup title, Real Boxing 2, is launching later this year. Although there’s no word of an official release date, the launch trailer (attached above) gives us a good look as to what we can expect from the new game.
As you can see from the trailer, this game looks absolutely stunning. Much like its predecessor, Real Boxing 2 will focus on providing a lifelike boxing experience thanks to its use of Unreal Engine 4. It will feature a single and multiplayer career mode that will allow you to grow your boxer from zero to hero. You can fight in various events, complete different contracts and even challenge bosses to fights to earn some rewards. Character customization options will also be present in Real Boxing 2, allowing you to create your own unique character by means of different items, character classes and more.
If you’d like to try it out early, you can sign up for the Real Boxing 2 VIP Club for a chance to get early access to a playable beta that will be available before the game is released to the masses. Signing up for the VIP Club will also earn you a member-only starting bonus and unique gear set for your boxer.
We’ll let you know when the game becomes available for all.
How to switch from iOS to Android and keep all your stuff
Switching to a phone within the same ecosystem is a breeze, thanks to cloud synchronization and format compatibility, but what happens when you want to get a new handset that runs on a different operating system? A very common case is when people are trying to switch from iOS to Android.
This can become a convoluted process, so we thought we should give you some good tips. In this tutorial we will show you the best ways to transfer all your data from an iPhone to an Android device. Let’s jump right into the goods.
How to transfer contacts
This process’ simplicity will highly depend on your previous practices for syncing contacts. Are you synchronizing your contacts to your Gmail account? If so, getting your contacts on your brand new Android smartphone is a breeze! All you have to do is enter your Google account. All your saved numbers will be automatically downloaded.
If you don’t synchronize your contacts to Gmail, however, you will have to work a little harder. The easiest way would probably be to use iCloud to get a .CVF file and then import that to your Android phone (or Google Contacts).
- On your iPhone, go to your Settings app and select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”.
- Go to Settings > iCloud and turn on “Contacts”.
- Your contacts will upload to Apple’s cloud services shortly.
- Now use a browser to go to iCloud.com and log in with your Apple ID.
- Select “Contacts” and then click on the gear icon in the lower-left corner.
- Click on “Select all”.
- Click on the gear again and select “Export vCard…”.
- When the .CVF file downloads, you can either import that file to your Google Contacts or straight to your phone.
- If you want to use Google Contacts, just go to contacts.google.com and click on “Import” and then “Go to old contacts”. Click on the “More” button and select “Import”. Select the file and you are done.
- To import the .CVF file directly to your new smartphone, just get the file into your phone using any methods such as transferring via a microSD card or by hooking up your phone to your PC. Once the file is on your device, you simply open your Phone app and tap on the menu button. There should be an option to “Import/export”. Select the file and be on your way.
How to transfer calendar
Just as it was with Contacts, your calendar can also be synced to your Google account, but that will only be convenient if you did it from the beginning. You don’t want to manually change all your calendar entries, so we will show you how to transfer all your calendar events in a batch. Oh, and we will use iCloud once again.
- Go to your iPhone’s Settings app and select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”.
- Select “Add Account” and log into your iCloud account.
- Allow your iPhone to sync your local calendar files to iCloud.
- Use a browser to access iCloud.com and login with your iCloud account.
- Click the Calendar icon to open the Calendar interface.
- On the left pane, click the “Share Calendar” button beside the calendar that you want to export.
- In the popup balloon, tick “Public Calendar”. Copy the sharing URL that appears below it.
- On a new web browser tab or window, paste the copied URL.
- Change “
webcal"in the URL to “http"and press the Enter key to open the address. - Your Web browser will download a file with random characters as a file name. This file is actually a copy of your iCloud Calendar entries.
- Save the file to a convenient folder on your computer. For convenience, you may rename the file and add the
icsextension (e.g., calendar.ics). - Open and login to Google Calendar on your Web browser.
- On the left pane of the Google Calendar interface, click the menu arrow at the right of “Other Calendars”.
- Select “Import Calendar”.
- Select the exported calendar file that you downloaded from iCloud. You can also choose the destination Google calendar (if you have more than one) in the same dialog.
- Click the “Import” button to upload the file. Once importing is finished, you should be able to see the imported entries in the Google Calendar web interface. The new entries will also be synced to your Android device.
Transferring your photos
Oh, all those precious photos. It would be horrible to lose them in the process of switching to Android, right? You could probably do things the old way and manually transfer files… like a caveman. Or you can just take advantage of the awesome cloud storage services we now have access to.
You could just back up your photos to Drive, Drobbox or your service of choice, but I happen to prefer using Google’s new Photos app. This new service allows you to upload unlimited high quality images and sync them across smartphones. And yes, it’s available for both Android and iOS.
- Download the iOS Google Photos app.
- During set-up, the app will ask if you want to backup your photos. Go ahead and turn the feature on.
- Your photos will begin uploading. This will use a substantial amount of data, so be sure to connect to a WiFi network.
- When all images are uploaded to Google Photos, pull out your Android phone and download the Photos app from the Google Play Store.
- Go through the set-up process. Your images will be there.
Of course, you can also do it manually by using a PC.
- Connect your iPhone to your PC via USB cable. Do the same for your Android phone.
- On your Windows PC, open “My Computer”.
- You should be able to see two new drives or entries under “Portable Devices”. One is for your iPhone storage (usually labeled “Apple iPhone” or “Edgar’s iPhone” or something similar) and the other is for your Android. If you don’t see them, try installing the phone drivers.
- Open the iPhone’s storage in a new window.
- Open your Android’s storage in a new window.
- On the window for your iPhone’s storage, locate the folder named “DCIM”. You will find your photo folders inside the that folder.
- Simply select the photos that you want to transfer. Then, drag them from the iPhone images folder and drop them onto your Android images folder.
How to transfer music
You can always just transfer your music the old fashion way, as well – by manually moving files from phone to phone. It’s probably easier to simply upload your tunes to Google Play Music, though. Of course, this is given that you have all your music on your computer. We will assume you are using iTunes, for obvious reasons. Make sure to go to iTunes and download any music you may have purchased from your phone and isn’t saved locally.
After doing that, just use Google Music Manager to upload all your music to Google Play Music. This will sync across all Android devices, but the only main issue is that if the file is not downloaded, you will use up data while playing it. Make sure to pin or download songs you want to hear offline.
- Download Google Music Manager to your PC.
- Install the program and run it.
- During set-up, there will be an option to “Upload songs to Google Play”.
- Select “iTunes” and finish the initial set-up.
- Sit back and let the program upload all your songs to Google Play Music.
You will have to struggle with some things
Moving to a new platform can be a bit tiring and complicated. We gave you some tools that will make your experience much smoother, but know there are some things you simply can’t avoid. For one, you will need to manually find all your apps and install them. There’s no way to transfer applications from iOS to Android.
In addition, you should upload any documents and odd files to your cloud storage service of choice. You can easily download these from your Android phone using the official app.
All set? Happy transferring! Also, we know everyone has a different way of doing things. What other methods for transferring all your goodies do you use? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
AIVAnet 