A supermoon lunar eclipse is a pretty rare thing, so go look at it now
If you’re thinking the moon is looking particularly foreboding, don’t worry. Your eyes aren’t playing tricks, and nor is it the end of days, but a lunar phenomenon that happens once roughly every 30 years. If you look outside now, you’ll see a supermoon lunar eclipse: a combination of a very nearby moon — making it look up to 14 percent bigger — and reflected orange hue from the sun, which is lined up with the moon and the Earth. Get your camera out (or hold your phone real steady), and go outside. But if you don’t really like “outside”, NASA’s offering its own livestream right here. And if you miss it, you’ll just have to wait til 2033.
Source: NASA
Google bringing high-speed WiFi to 400 Indian train stations
Google’s main concern is getting people online, obviously due to the fact that most of their profits come from internet users; and hopefully because they want to help out, too. Regardless, it makes sense that they focus on emerging markets, as this is where most new internet users will come from. According to Internet Live Stats, only around 40% of the world population has an internet connection, and you can be sure this is something Google is working on changing.
Projects such as Android One, YouTube offline, Google Maps offline and Project Loon are only some of Google’s initiatives to bring a better online experience to emerging markets like India. Today the Mountain View-based tech company announces another big move to get millions of train commuters online, after welcoming Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Googleplex for a visit.
The Search Giant is collaborating with Indian Railways and RailTel to bring WiFi to 400 train stations in India. And Google claims this is not your usual internet connection, it is said to be “high-speed” broadband, which will be “many times faster than what most people in India have access to today”.
Google will launch this new service on 100 of the busiest stations, which should be online by the end of 2016. Other locations will follow soon afterwards. Regardless, this is a good advancement, as the first 100 stations should cover about 10 million users who take advantage of these stations every single day.
With over 300 million active users in India, this country ranks second in number of internet surfers, only surpassed by China. The kicker here is there are still about a billion Indians offline, which are the ones Google is trying to target here.
The best part? This service will be completely free at first. Yes… at first. In the long run, Google expects the service to be “self-sustainable” and get some profits in order to further expand to new stations.
So there you have it, fellow Indian techies! Soon you will be enjoying internet at many of your train stations, all thanks to Google’s efforts to get as many users online as possible. I just have to wonder how fast is “high speed internet”. Google is not specifying speeds, which definitely makes us very curious.
Hilton looks into claims its hotels’ shops were hacked
If you’ve been spendy at one of Hilton’s hotels in recent memory, you may want to double-check your financial records. The company is investigating claims by security guru Brian Krebs that hackers compromised banking card data at a “large number” of Hilton’s gift shops and restaurants, ranging from Doubletree locations all the way to posh Waldorf Astoria hotels. The intruders reportedly broke into point-of-sale machines as far back as November 2014, and it’s possible that their attacks are continuing to this day.
Hilton is quick to point out that card fraud is “all too common,” and that it works with “some of the top experts” in security to keep you safe. Those are true (just ask Target), but the concern is that the company didn’t do enough to either offer a strong initial defense or to catch the breaches until several months after they began. And no matter how vigilant the chain was, these statements won’t be much consolation if thieves use your accounts to go on a shopping spree.
[Image credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan]
Source: Krebs on Security
Podcast 033: If a Nexus leaks, will you still buy it?
What starts off as a collection of selfie stick belittling, turns into Andrew Grush, Joe Hindy and Nirave Gondhia following along as Jonathan Feist pretends to lead the show. We talk about Blackberry and their new Priv, previously known as Venice, which leads to ribbing Josh while he’s not there to defend himself. Google has two new devices coming this week, the Nexus 5X and the Nexus 6P. We wanted to say little more on the subject, saving our thoughts for next week, but our discussion on the current leak culture took us right back to the Nexus devices. Will you be purchasing a new Nexus device, or at least holding off another purchase until you see what Google has to offer? Huawei was a recurring topic throughout the show, we all had mostly great things to say about them and their products, leaving us highly anticipating the Nexus 6P, which is also built by Huawei. I hope you have as much fun listening as we did recording.
The Android Authority Podcast – discussing topics in Android every week.
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Follow our Hosts
Joshua Vergara
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Joseph Hindy
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Nirave Gondhia
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Recorded on September 25th, 2015 – Hosted and Produced by Jonathan Feist, on behalf of Joshua Vergara
Google will help bring high-speed Internet to India’s train stations
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While there are over a billion people in the world who have access to smartphones and the Internet, that still leaves between 5-6 billion people with limited-to-no Internet access – in India alone, there are still one billion people not online, despite the fact that it now has the second largest population of Internet users in the world. As a step to help one of the world’s fastest growing mobile markets get Internet to more of its consumers, Google will help bring high-speed Internet to India’s train stations, announced by CEO Sundar Pichai today. The collaboration between India and Google was announced when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Google’s HQ.
The infrastructure that Google is looking to put in is broadband Internet to provide Wi-Fi in 400 stations across India – 100 of these are expected to be finish by the end of 2016, and even finishing these 100 will provide Internet to 10 million more people everyday as they pass through these stations. With this new infrastructure, the growth of Android One, and the ability for apps like YouTube (and Maps soon) to work offline, India is definitely an area that is going to see even more incredible growth in the near future.
What do you think about Google helping to provide Internet to India? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Google Blog
The post Google will help bring high-speed Internet to India’s train stations appeared first on AndroidSPIN.
Microsoft kit helps you run Windows 10 on a Raspberry Pi
Sure, it’s no secret that you can run Windows 10 on a tiny Raspberry Pi 2, but actually doing that could prove to be a challenge. What parts do you need? And what do you do with it when you’re ready? That’s where Microsoft and Adafruit think they can help. They’ve released a Windows IoT Core Starter Kit that gives you everything you need to get going, including an SD card preloaded with Windows 10 IoT Core and the tools you need (both hardware and software) to start on some projects. It’ll cost you $115 if you need a Raspberry Pi 2 at the same time, and $40 if you already have one sitting around. That’s a lot of money to spend on such a modest device, but it might pay off if you’d like to spend more time creating clever machines than searching forums for help.
Via: Microsoft-News, Engadget Chinese
Source: Adafruit, Blogging Windows
Google is putting WiFi in 400 Indian train stations
India may be rapidly building up its reputation as a tech-savvy country, but there are still hundreds of millions of people in the country who’ve had little to no experience with the internet. Google may have a clever solution to that problem, however. It’s installing WiFi (initially for free) in 400 train stations across India, with 100 of the busiest stations due to get online by the end of 2016. The hope is that this will connect the 10 million people who pass through India’s train system every day, letting them experience the web even if they’d otherwise have no access at all. And it’s not basic data, either. Google is promising speeds good enough to stream HD video and otherwise outclass what many Indians are familiar with.
OF course, this isn’t strictly an altruistic gesture. Microsoft teased plans to bring cheap broadband to 500,000 Indian villages just a day before Google’s announcement, and Facebook has its own ongoing free internet program. Google is racing to capture the attention of first-time internet users, and the tech industry at large profits when more people are viewing ads and using cloud services. Moreover, this could help curry the favor of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited Silicon Valley this weekend — important when officials are worried that Google is abusing its search dominance. Still, it’s hard to knock an effort that could improve the quality of life in one of the most populous countries on the planet.
Source: Google Official Blog
Phonejoy GamePad 2 Review
It’s not the first time we’ve heard from Phonejoy and their game controller, having reviewed the first iteration of the Phonejoy GamePad and being incredibly impressed with it. Now, we seen the second-generation of the accessory in the form of PhoneJoy GamePad 2, and we got the opportunity to review it.
What’s New
– Improved battery capacity from 8 hours of gameplay to 14 hours of gameplay;
– New action buttons for better sensitivity;
– New outstanding analog sticks for better control, depression ability (L3/R3), and contact surface (Concave);
– Analog L2/R2 instead of regular buttons;
– Bluetooth 2.1 -> Bluetooth 3.0;
– Improved interface protocol for full compatibility with all HID input compatible games.
Sure, that battery increase doesn’t sound like too much of a thing, but i’ve been using the Phonejoy GamePad 2 extensively since receiving it over a week ago and still am yet to charge it, which is exactly what you want from a portable accessory.
The mechanism used to hold the device feels improved and the hinge is extremely strong, which leaves you confident that the device won’t fall out. The hinge then collapses to return to the GamePad 2’s most notable feature and that’s its profile when not being used; it is extremely portable and fits in your back pocket quite comfortably.
Phonejoy GamePad 2 Pricing
The gamepad is available in a tiered pricing model:
Basic Bundle – US $69.90
Advanced Bundle – US $79.90
Pro Bundle – US $89.90
The buttons on the Phonejoy GamePad 2 feel better than ever, as do the analogue buttons, which are extremely responsive. It was good last year, but the second-generation has taken things that but further and it looks, feels, and functions great.
The Phonejoy GamePad 2 will be available online on 30th Sep 2015 at www.phonejoy.com
The post Phonejoy GamePad 2 Review appeared first on AndroidGuys.
The iPad Pro’s biggest challenge: finding its place between tablet and laptop
This article originally appeared on Fast Company and is reprinted with permission.
By Jared Newman
When Apple launched the iPad in 2010, the biggest question was whether it could carve out a space between smartphones and laptops.
For a while, the answer was yes, as the iPad became Apple’s fastest-growing product. But since then, smartphones have become larger and more powerful, while laptops have become thinner, lighter, and more battery-efficient. iPad sales have felt the squeeze, declining for two straight years even as Apple’s iPhone and Mac sales flourish.
Rather than give up, Apple is sharpening its focus with the iPad Pro, which is larger and more powerful than its predecessors, with an optional keyboard and drawing stylus. The question now is whether this new space—somewhere between smaller media consumption tablets and full-blown laptops—can help revitalize the iPad as a whole.
Put another way, can the iPad become even more like a laptop without losing its sense of purpose?
Making Trade-offs
During Apple’s September event, CEO Tim Cook offered a refresher on what the iPad is supposed to accomplish. “iPad is the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing, a simple multi-touch piece of glass that instantly transforms into virtually anything you want it to be,” he said.
What Cook didn’t readily acknowledge is that the iPad Pro appears to compromise this vision, with both its hardware and software becoming more laptop-like.
The $169 Smart Keyboard accessory, for instance, could turn out to be essential for anyone doing copious amounts of text entry on the iPad, but it may also feel like a trade-off. As a tablet, the entire device will become heavier and more cumbersome. And as a laptop, there’s no trackpad to give your arms a rest from reaching out to the touch screen. (The iPad’s software keyboard will offer a cursor for selecting text, but there’s no word on how to access this cursor with the physical keyboard attached.)
Even without the keyboard, the size of the iPad Pro brings trade-offs compared to its smaller predecessors. While the display itself may be more immersive, the larger footprint will inhibit certain actions such as thumb typing or cradling the device in one hand. And while the iPad Pro’s upgraded processor and RAM will allow for more powerful apps, it could also create a class of software that doesn’t work with smaller models.
Meanwhile, the iPad’s software is becoming increasingly complex. The new Slide Over and Split View features in iOS 9 let users run two apps side by side, adding an element of window management to the iPad. And with iCloud Drive, users can now expose a file system for all their documents. These features will surely make the iPad much more powerful. But as some observers such as Ben Thompson have pointed out, they also risk making the iPad feel less like a simple piece of glass.
Better Ingredients, Better Apps
Unless Tim Cook has a short memory, he must be conscious of these compromises. It was Cook, after all, who once dismissed laptop-tablet hybrids such as Microsoft’s Surface. “Anything can be forced to converge,” Cook said in a 2012 earnings call, “but the problem is that products are about trade-offs, and you begin to make trade-offs to the point where what you have left doesn’t please anyone.”
It makes you wonder why Cook and company ultimately felt that some trade-offs were necessary.
The iPad Pro’s more laptop-like qualities could be Apple’s way of appealing to app makers, says Kevin La Rue, vice president for photography software maker Macphun. As an example, he points to Adobe, whose Creative Cloud apps will make use of the Apple Pencil stylus, and Microsoft, which is fully embracing Split View multitasking in its Office software.
“I think they had to get there from a hardware standpoint, and I think it could actually cause a resurgence in serious app developers wanting to do stuff for the platform,” La Rue says.
Macphun, for its part, is planning to port more of its Mac apps to the iPad Pro in 2016, taking advantage of the Apple Pencil, faster processor, and 4 GB of RAM. (The company is debating whether these apps should have Pro-only features or be entirely exclusive to iPad Pro users). And if anything, La Rue is hoping for even more PC-like conceits, such as connectivity to a second display or an external hard drive.
Sketching on the iPad Pro with the Pencil stylus
Defining The Productive Tablet
At some point, however, the thing that La Rue is describing starts to sound like a Mac. But he’s emphatic in saying that the two platforms should not converge. The appeal of the iPad is that it’s still fundamentally a tablet, but that users can mix or match accessories as the situation demands.
“You can go in with a base iPad, and that may be perfectly fine for 60 of the buyers, and then you add on these accessories,” La Rue says. “If you bought it, and had all that stuff in-box, then you’re getting awful close to the [MacBook] Air.”
But again, we come back to the central question: Why even bother tacking on these accessories at all? Why use an iPad Pro if your Windows PC or Mac is already an effective productivity tool?
Understanding how best to use the iPad Pro is going to take time.
In talking to app makers, there’s a sense that the answer is still illusive. La Rue, for instance, says Macphun is still figuring out how many people will finish a photo-editing job on their tablets, versus using it as a starting point.
But Peter Arvai, cofounder and CEO of presentation software Prezi, believes that’s okay. He sees the iPad as an entirely new computing format, one that’s more adaptable and flexible than anything that came before. Understanding how best to use it is going to take time, and that only speaks to its disruptive potential.
“To assume that just because we launch an iPad that we immediately figure out how to use it the right way, I don’t think it’s the right assumption,” he says.
In the meantime, the iPad Pro is merely providing some more familiar tools from the laptop age. Even if they cloud Apple’s vision for the future of computing, it’s a better alternative than no future at all.
[Photo: courtesy of Apple]
More from Fast Company:
Video Shows Benefits of 2GB RAM in iPhone 6s
When Apple announced the iPhone 6s, they didn’t mention that the new iPhones carry 2GB of RAM, an increase from 1GB on the iPhone 6. The 2GB RAM was later confirmed in Xcode and benchmarks. This increased RAM allows the iPhone to keep more Apps and data active in memory.
iDownloadBlog recorded this video showing the difference between the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s after loading several websites in Safari:
The iPhone 6s is able to keep more websites active in memory without requiring a reload when returning to the tab. The additional RAM should also allow more apps to remain active in memory without relaunching.
The iPhone 6s and 6s Plus just launched on Friday.
AIVAnet 