Evatran’s aftermarket charger for your Tesla Model S is coming soon

EV charging company Evatran has been prepping its upcoming Plugless wireless charging system for release in the near future.

The product, which was previously available for pre-order for Tesla Model S owners, is about to start shipping. Plugless acts as a boon for drivers way creating a drive-up wireless charging pad to juice up the car itself.

Vehicle owners won’t be responsible for doing this themselves, though. Plugless will use installers to add on a special module that’s needed for the charging system to work, and it’s all included in the entry price tag of $2,440 per system. It won’t affect the car’s warranty, and Plugless offers its own three-year warranty in the event anything goes south, so you’re covered in the event any issues arise.

The charging kit can provide a minimum of 20 miles of juice per hour with a 7.2kW charging rate, and it can be used indoors or outdoors. The first installations will begin in a few weeks to a small group of those lucky enough to have pre-ordered. After that, more Model S owners will see a larger expansion this fall.

Via: TechCrunch

Pandora Set to Introduce Two New On-Demand Paid Subscription Tiers

Streaming radio service Pandora is getting ready to introduce two new on-demand paid subscription tiers, in addition to keeping its popular free option available, according to people familiar with the matter speaking with The Wall Street Journal.

The company is said to be “close to inking deals” with some major record companies that will let it expand the two new tiers in both the United States and some markets overseas.

The most expensive subscription is said to be $10 per month and grant users unlimited access to tens of millions of songs on Pandora, bringing the internet radio streaming service closer to that of Spotify and Apple Music. The company will then slightly tweak its existing $5 per month ad-free option with a few new perks like skipping songs, offline listening, and more.

While competing with the likes of Spotify, Apple and other $10-a-month service providers may be difficult, some music-industry executives believe that Pandora’s planned $5-a-month tier presents a bigger opportunity for the business, potentially unlocking new revenue from consumers who want a bit more control over their listening experience but wouldn’t pay $10 a month.

First launched in 2000, Pandora has never had to get individual permission from record labels to play their music since its services offer only randomized, radio-like “stations” that prevent users from playing specific songs. Since its new model will add these on-demand listening features for its users, Pandora now has to partner with various record labels in addition to the broad internet radio licensing fees it pays.

The company hopes its new business model attracts subscribers, since it’s seen a “listenership plateau” over the past few years with 80 million active monthly users, about 4 million of which are paying $5 per month to avoid ads between songs. Currently, the radio features of Pandora are available in the United States, Australia and New Zealand, but the potential new markets overseas it will expand to have not yet been disclosed.

Also left unspecified was a release date for the new on-demand streaming tiers beyond sometime in the fall. For those who don’t have it, you can download the Pandora app for free from the iOS App Store. [Direct Link]

Tag: Pandora
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Steve Jobs to Be Inducted Into International Photography Hall of Fame

The International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum, in celebration of its 50th anniversary, has announced that Steve Jobs will be posthumously inducted into its Hall of Fame in St. Louis, Missouri, which recognizes the work of pioneers, artists, and innovators who have pushed photography forward.

Jobs will be one of eight new inductees on October 28, alongside Photoshop co-creators John Knoll and Thomas Knoll, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, photographers Ernst Haas and Annie Leibovitz, singer-songwriter and digital photographer Graham Nash, and documentary photographer Sebastião Salgado.

“As we look ahead to the next 50 years of the IPHF, we are honored to continue to recognize and celebrate photographers and industry professionals that have made significant contributions to the profession, helping to shape and define modern photography,” said Patty Wente, executive director of the IPHF. “This year’s inductees represent the perfect combination of innovation and artistry; bridging photography’s pioneering past with its fantastic future.”

Jobs’ induction is closely linked to the iPhone, which Apple in the past has described as the world’s most popular camera:

Steve Jobs was an American inventor and entrepreneur who cofounded Apple and led it to become the world’s most innovative company. Steve helped create products that revolutionized the creative world and became essential tools for designers, filmmakers, music producers and photographers. Passionate about photography both in his work and personal life, his most profound contribution to the artistic community and the world is the iPhone which, in less than a decade, has changed both the art of photography and the industry around it.

Past inductees include Philippe Halsman, who famously photographed Albert Einstein in 1947, Ansel Adams, George Eastman, Edwin Land, Edward Steichen, and 64 other esteemed professionals. Inductees must have made a “notable contribution to the art or science of photography” and “have a significant impact on the photography industry and/or history of photography.”

Jobs, who co-founded Apple alongside Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976, passed away on October 5, 2011.

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8 things to know about the Galaxy Note 7’s SD card slot

Samsung brought the SD card slot back to the Note line — now it’s time to reacquaint yourself with it.

Note buyers have spoken: they wanted an SD card slot back in their phone. Samsung listened, and the Galaxy Note 7 brought back the card slot just like the Galaxy S7 did — hiding right in there next to the SD card.

Things mostly pick up right where they left off with the SD card slot on the Note 4, though the software and capabilities have changed a bit. If you have a Note 7 or are getting ready to pick one up, these are the things you should know about expanding the storage in your phone.

No ‘adoptable storage’ option to be found here

Perhaps the biggest thing to note right off the top is that the Galaxy Note 7 doesn’t support Marshmallow’s “Adoptable storage” system as we’ve seen implemented on other phones. Adoptable storage is an optional system that phone makers can use that lets the SD card be completely consumed by the phone, in effect becoming just another part of the internal storage — this lets the phone freely move apps and files between the SD card and internal storage, but it has some downsides as well.

The Note 7 skips the feature altogether for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being issues with performance, stability and user confusion. That means the SD card in the Note 7 simply acts as a separate, mountable piece of storage that has no special tricks associated with it. You can just load data on it, put it in the phone and the phone will be able to read the files. The phone can also write to the card, but not span data across from the card to the internal storage.

Not every app can be moved to the SD card

One of the downsides of not using Adoptable storage is that you’re still dealing with the “old” way of putting apps on your SD card, if you feel the need to. To move apps over to the SD card on your Note 7, you simply go into the settings, find the application settings and go to each app that you want to move. Not every app can be moved to the SD card, though, as some have certain permissions or performance requirements that make them only run from internal storage.

Going a step further, many apps that you think have moved over to the SD card may have only moved part of their assets to the external storage. For example if you install a large game and want to put it on your SD card, you may find that the game has offloaded some of its media assets to the SD card, but kept the core of the game and any additional downloads on the internal storage. Because of this shortcoming you may want to just keep all of your apps locally on the Note 7’s internal storage, and just use the SD card for other types of media instead.

Removing your SD card also removes the SIM

This is probably the simplest of tips, but it’s important to remember where the SD card lives and what that means for it. The SD card shares a slot with the SIM card tray, meaning that if you want to remove one, you’re going to remove the other.

If you remove the SD card to move media back and forth between your phone and computer, that means your SIM just came out of your phone — and chances are you’re going to want to reboot when you put the SIM card back inside. On the opposite end of things, if you ever have to remove your SIM card (which won’t happen nearly as often), you’ll lose access to your media and apps on the SD card until it’s replaced and re-mounted in the phone.

Pictures and video save to the card by default

When you put an SD card in your Galaxy Note 7, the phone will start to utilize it right away. And since you can’t move all of your apps over to the card, it makes sense to start putting pictures and videos you take there, so that’s what the camera does by default. When you first launch the camera app after inserting an SD card you’ll see a warning letting you know of the change, and if you don’t want photos or videos saved to the SD card it’s a simple switch in the camera settings.

If you choose to keep that default setting, you’ll notice that the Gallery app creates a separate folder for those images in the “Albums” area of the app, which is separate from any other photos or videos you took before you put the SD card in. The difference is noted by a little SD card logo in the corner of the album, which is a little confusing at first. If you just stick to the “Pictures” tab of the Gallery you won’t notice any difference, as all of the photos — SD card or not — will show up in the regular photo timeline.

SD card photos may be odd to handle in third-party apps

There is one notable downside of storing images and videos from the camera on your SD card: the only guaranteed way to delete those files is from the app that created them, which in this case is the default Camera and Gallery apps. If you prefer to use another gallery app, you may not be able to properly move around and delete photos that are stored on the SD card. For example in Google Photos, and many other popular gallery apps, you’ll be able to view and apply extra edits to the photos but you can’t delete the original files from within the third-party app.

This becomes particularly bothersome in a cloud-based gallery app like Google Photos where you can delete photos remotely and have those changes sync back to your Galaxy Note 7 — in this case Google Photos will never be able to delete those local files on your phone, you have to do it manually from within Samsung’s Gallery app. If you use another simple gallery app without any cloud functions (and using an older permission model or a workaround) it may be able to manage those SD card photos just fine — but it’s something to be aware of if you run into odd behavior when deleting.

You probably don’t have to worry about performance

External SD card storage will definitely be slower than the internal storage on your phone, but thanks to the overall increase in SD card speeds in the past couple of years this isn’t really something to get worried about. Chances are that the only real slowdown in this configuration is the actual connection from the card to the phone, rather than the card itself, and even that isn’t that big of a bottleneck.

Most of what you’re doing with an SD card is pretty small, relatively slow and consistent movement of data. Taking a few pictures, reading HD video or MP3 audio, or maybe saving some documents. None of these things require a super-fast SD card, and you won’t notice any difference in performance when comparing to doing the same functions with internal storage.

Find good deals on SD cards

The biggest reason to not buy an absolutely bottom-of-the-barrel SD card is that you can get really good cards for a great deal all around the internet. Sure a super-fast 200GB card is going to set you back a few extra dollars, but if you just need to add another 64GB of storage you can get a great, name-brand SD card for less than $30 and know you’re getting a good product that’s going to do everything you need.

Use caution when buying the cheapest of the cheap cards out there, and be sure to read the specs and reviews before you buy.

You can encrypt the card for your own safety

So your Galaxy Note 7 is pretty secure, locked up tight behind a fingerprint or maybe even your irises. Even if someone has your phone in their hands, they can’t access your data, which is an awesome thing. But if they have a SIM tray removal tool, they can pop out your SD card in just a few seconds and have access to every file on that card when they plug it into their computer.

For this reason, you should seriously consider encrypting your SD card if you put any sort of personal information on the card. You can do so by heading into your Settings > Lock screen and security > Encrypt SD card. How long it’ll take depends on the amount of data on your card — it could be anywhere from a handful of seconds to several minutes or even an hour for a completely full 256GB card. If you ever need to decrypt the data, it’ll take just the same amount of time from the same settings screen — you don’t lose any data in the process.

By encrypting the SD card, you’re ensuring that the only device that can read that card is the phone you encrypted it with. Now of course this has a few downsides: you can no longer quickly take out the card to transfer data to another device, and if your Note 7 is ever damaged beyond repair you won’t be able to recover your own files off of the SD card. Both may be worthy trade offs considering the extra layer of security you’re adding.

Well, maybe you don’t need an SD card

So that’s everything you really need to know about the SD card in the Galaxy Note 7 … well, there’s one more thing: maybe you don’t even need an SD card in your Note 7. With the latest generation, Samsung bumped up the internal storage to 64 from 32GB, meaning you’ll have somewhere around 50GB of space free to do anything you like on the phone.

For most people, 50GB of space will be plenty for everything they need — and for that reason, you should probably consider buying your Note 7 and using it without an SD card for a while to see how close you get to maxing out the internal storage. If you can fit all of your needs into the internal storage, it’s far preferable to managing a new volume of storage on a separate SD card. It’ll also save you a few dollars.

Samsung Galaxy Note 7

• Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
• The latest Galaxy Note 7 news!
• Here are all four Note 7 colors
• Complete Galaxy Note 7 specs
• Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!

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Lock in higher pay with this Microsoft certification training, now over 90 per cent off

When it comes to climbing the tech career ladder, few things speed the process up faster than having the right certification.

The Microsoft MCSA Server 2012 Certification and Cloud Computing Bundle will prepare you to ace several Microsoft IT certification exams. On sale for a limited time, Pocket-Lint readers can get this bundle for only £63.70 (49 USD).

Whether you’re looking to snag a promotion or add some stopping power to your resume, this prep bundle is perfect for taking your IT prospects to the next level. With top-tier instruction, you’ll prepare yourself to ace the MCSA Server 2012 exam–key for pursuing a high-paying career in server management.

Plus, having a MCSA Server certification will put you on a clear path for snagging the industry-revered MCSE certification.

Across 7 interactive modules, you’ll learn the nitty-gritty of backup server installation and management theory. You’ll get hands-on experience building, deploying, and managing an advanced Windows Server 2012 network. On top of providing interactive training, this bundle delivers Microsoft-approved course materials, so you’ll have the best tools to prepare for Microsoft’s own exam.

As an added bonus, this bundle also grants you free access to prep materials for the Microsoft 70-243, 70-246, and 70-247 Cloud Computing certification exams. With these extra certifications, you’ll dramatically improve your career prospects in one of IT’s most in-demand fields.

For a limited time, Pocket-Lint readers can save big on the Microsoft MCSA Server 2012 Certification and Cloud Computing Bundle. Normally retailing for £873.60, this bundle is on sale for more than 90 per cent off, making the final price only £63.70 $(49 USD).

Boost your photo game with this flexible tripod, now under £12

While there’s much to say about our smartphones’ beefy cameras, all that power is useless if you can’t shoot from the right angle. The Flexible Tripod for Smartphones and Cameras opens up a whole new array of creative angles to shoot from, and it’s super portable.

For a limited time, Pocket-Lint readers can get the Flexible Tripod on sale for only £11.68 ($8.99 USD).

Compatible with cameras and smartphones, the Flexible Tripod gives you the stability of a tripod with none of the added bulk.

Designed for maximum flexibility, this tripod’s legs can wrap around most fixtures. Secure them to branches, poles, fences, and more, and watch your shooting options multiply. Uneven surfaces can throw off normal tripods, but the Flexible Tripod’s legs can level out your smartphone on any surface. Whether you’re shooting in the wild or at home, this tripod can be deployed in any setting.

While other tripods are heavy and cumbersome, this one’s made with mobility in mind. The Flexible Tripod’s legs collapse, making it a perfect travel companion for hikes, campouts, and guerilla photo shoots. As portable as your smartphone, there’s no excuse to leave your house without both if you plan on shooting.

Your shooting options shouldn’t be limited based on where you go. For a limited time, Pocket-Lint readers can pick up the Flexible Tripod for Smartphones and Cameras at a tremendous discount. Normally retailing for £25.98, the Flexible Tripod is on sale for only £11.68 ($8.99 USD), saving you more than half off.

ICYMI: Neck pillows that work and self-driving everything

Today on In Case You Missed It: Ford Motor Company joined the self-driving car race, taking on Uber, which just bought autonomous truck company Otto. We’re just excited to see the self-driving vehicles of the future, though those two had better hurry up, since Easymile is already testing actual transport around a large city now.

Two Kickstarter projects for actually useful neck pillows are trending. We are fans of the FaceCradle but the nodpod may be just as useful to you. You might also be interested in this video of a dog dressed as Pac-Man, going after all the balloons. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.