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5 Best Android VPNs – Secure Your Phone or Tablet in 2017

2017-10-02T13:54:00.003+05:30

Sitting in your pocket is arguably the defining technology of our times. Even the most humble Android handset allows you previously undreamed-of access to all of human knowledge, and an easy way to communicate with people anywhere in the world.

It also lets you share plenty of amusing pictures of cats.

More people now access the internet using Android phones than with any other device. This means that installing a Virtual Private Network (VPN) on your phone is at least as useful and important as it is on a desktop device.

Quick Links to our best 5 VPNs for Android Phone or Tablets

With a VPN on your Android phone or tablet you can:

Protect yourself from hackers when using public WiFi
Spoof your location, so you can watch services such as Netflix or BBC iPlayer from abroad
Hide what you get up to online from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and government
Hide you real identity (IP address) from websites you visit
Torrent safely

In other words, a VPN for Android can do everything on your phone or tablet that it can on a full desktop computer. There are, however, a couple of caveats to this. I will discuss these after we have looked at the BestVPN.com team’s pick of the best VPNs for Android.

WINNER

#1 Best VPN for Android: ExpressVPN

PROS:

Special Deal: Save 49% Today!
30-day money-back guarantee
No usage logs
Servers in 94 countries
Great customer service
Peer-to-peer (P2P): yes

CONS:

A bit pricey - but worth it!

Great customer service and ease of use are the primary reasons that ExpressVPN remains such a popular choice for Android VPN users. As with its Windows, Mac and iOS clients, the ExpressVPN Android app strips things down to ensure that using it is simplicity itself. This focus on customer satisfaction is also amply demonstrated by ExpressVPN’s 24/7 customer support and industry-leading, 30-day money-back guarantee.When reviewing ExpressVPN, we found they keep no usage logs, but it does keep some connection (metadata) logs. It is based in the British Virgin Islands, but how this affects privacy is a little unclear. Users in China will appreciate ExpressVPN’s special “stealth” servers in Hong Kong, which also work using its Android app.

Additional features include three simultaneous connections and free Smart Domain Name System (DNS).

Special Deal: Save 49% Today!

Visit ExpressVPN »30-day Money Back Gaurantee

#2 Best VPN for Android: NordVPN

PROS:

No logs at all
Six simultaneous devices
Servers in 61+ countries
30-day money-back guarantee
“Double-hop VPN”

CONS:

Speeds can be slow

Based in Panama, NordVPN is well outside of the immediate reach of the NSA. It backs up this distinction by being very privacy-focused. NordVPN keeps no logs at all, uses strong encryption, and accepts payment via bitcoins. Some may appreciate NordVPN’s “double-hop” VPN chaining feature, although I am dubious about its value.The encryption used by NordVPN is very good. Speeds on many of NordVPN's servers can be rather slow, but you can find fast servers with a little trial and error. Android users are well-served with a dedicated Android VPN client, which in addition to OpenVPN provides the option to use the Internet Key Exchange version 2 (IKEv2) protocol.

Additional features: Torrenting permitted, DNS leak protection, per-app kill switch (desktop clients).

Visit NordVPN »

#3 Best VPN for Android: IPVanish

PROS:

No logs at all
Five simultaneous connections
Smart DNS included
Accepts bitcoin
P2P allowed

CONS:

Based in the US

Although based in the US (so not for the more NSA-phobic out there), this high-profile VPN company has good privacy credentials. It keeps no logs (at all), accepts payment in bitcoin, and permits torrenting. IPVanish also throws in a free Smart DNS service for all customers.Much like its desktop client, IPVanish's Android VPN app is a little basic. However, it's easy to use and works well, making it a great VPN for Android.

Additional features include apps for Android and iOS, and servers in 61 countries.

Visit IPVanish »

#4 Best VPN for Android: HideMyAss

PROS:

Servers in 190+ countries
Two simultaneous connections
30-day money-back guarantee
Can still unblock Netflix

CONS:

Keeps extensive logs
Known to betray users

Fourth on this tightly jostled list is high-profile VPN provider, HideMyAss (HMA). HMA boasts arguably the largest server network on the market - it currently stands at 190 countries and counting - but this positive is dampened by its serious lack of privacy. Not only does HMA keep extensive connection logs, but it's been known to betray its users and hand over information when asked by the authorities.Some perks to make up for its lack of security measures? HMA is one of the only services that can still access Netflix, and you can watch it on up to two simultaneous connections. Give the 30-day money-back guarantee a look below.

Visit HideMyAss »

#5 Best VPN for Android: StrongVPN

PROS:

No logs policy
Servers in over 24 countries countries
Five simultaneous connections
Five-day money-back guarantee
Excellent customer support

CONS:

A little slow
Random VPN protocol allocation
US company

StrongVPN is another US-based VPN provider that offers good value for money if you’re in the market for a VPN for Android. If you get a yearlong subscription you pay a paltry $5.83 for month. A bargain, considering that you can use one subscription on up to five of your devices!

StrongVPN offers other perks besides its wallet-friendly pricing. This includes accepting Bitcoin as payment, zero logs, servers in over 24 countries, and extra-strong encryption. What’s more, you can experience these all yourself without committing to the service, thanks to StrongVPN’s five-day money-back guarantee.

Visit StrongVPN »

VPNs for Android: What to Consider?

Avoid Mobile Apps

Using a VPN on your Android device routes all your data via a VPN server. However, the benefits of this can be rendered useless if the app you are using is sending your phone’s unique International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, Global Positioning System (GPS) location data, contact lists, Google Play/iTunes ID and more to the app publisher and/or Google.

Many perfectly legitimate apps do this. In order to gain the full privacy benefits of using a VPN for Android, or if you want to hide your real location, use a service’s web portal via your phone’s mobile browser rather than downloading the app for it.

Say, for example, that you want to browse for certain items on Amazon privately. Doturn on your VPN and visit amazon.com using your favorite web browser (e.g. Chrome) – without logging into your account, of course! Don’t fire up the Amazon app, or Amazon will know exactly who you are and where you are.

The good news is that VPNs will work for the Netflix apps if those specific services have not been blocked by Netflix.

Beware Free VPN Apps

There are shocking numbers of cowboy and malicious VPN apps available for Android that can be downloaded from the Play Store. These track your web activity, access your sensitive phone data, and can even infect your Android phone with malware.

In order to avoid such scam apps, avoid any that are “free.” Running a VPN service costs money, so if you’re not paying with money then you’ll be paying in some other way.

Reputable free VPN apps do exist, but these are invariably very limited, and are aimed at convincing you to upgrade to a full, premium service.

The other thing you can do to avoid scams is to only choose VPN providers that are recommended by reputable sources, such as BestVPN.com!

Secure Your Android!

If you’re using a VPN on your Android device because you want to improve your online privacy and security, that’s a great start! As I discuss in our VPNs for Beginners guide, a VPN is a vital tool in your privacy and security toolkit. It should not, however, be your only one.

Check out How to Encrypt your Android Phone for a full look at pros and cons of taking this step

Below are some ideas for further improving the security, and above all the privacy, of your Android phone.

Use the Firefox Browser with These Privacy Add-ons

The Chrome web browser that comes bundled with all versions of Android is basically spyware for Google. After all, that’s what Google does. Ditch it for open source Firefox, developed by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.

This is a great start, but you can improve Firefox with the following open source add-ons:

uBlock Origin – a lightweight, free and open-source software (FOSS) ad-blocker that does double duty as an anti-tracking add-on.
HTTPS Everywhere – developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), this tries to ensure that you always connect to a website using a Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) connection, if one is available.
Self-Destructing Cookies – this automatically deletes cookies when you close the browser tab that set them. This provides a high level of protection from tracking via cookies, without “breaking” websites. It also provides protection against Flash/zombie cookies and Etags, and cleans Document Object Model (DOM) storage.

Note that using any browser add-on makes you more susceptible to being tracked by browser fingerprinting.

Remove Google Play Services

As I hinted at above, Google’s business model is in direct conflict with any notions of privacy. It makes money by harvesting as much information about you as possible. It then uses that data to generate highly targeted advertising revenue.

Although undoubtedly a pain in the rear, it is therefore worth considering de-Googling your Android phone. Most crucially, you should consider removing the Google Play Services framework. This is closed-source code that allows Google to perform extensive low-level surveillance on almost every Android device.

Note that removing Google Play Services and other Google system apps (Gapps) will prevent other apps from working properly. Good news is that F-Droid allows you to download many apps that either don’t need Gapps, or have been modified to no longer need them.

Here are some further suggestions on how to get by without Google on your phone.

How to De-Google Your Android Phone

A guide to disabling default system apps (including Google ones) without rooting your phone is available here. If you want to completely remove all Google apps, this can be done using Titanium Backup. However, this does require rooting your phone.

Another option is to replace the version of Android your phone came with with modified version of Android (often called a “custom ROM”) that has already been de-Googled.

Popular examples of Google-free custom ROMs include LineageOS (above) and, for the really privacy-conscious, Copperhead.

Use Signal to Chat with Your Contacts

Making phone calls or sending text messages using your regular phone network is about as private as standing outside a police station and shouting. Your network provider can hear and see everything you say, the police can monitor your conversations directly using Stingray devices, and more.

Most online messaging and internet telephony (VoIP) apps are little better. No matter what promises a service makes, if it doesn’t provide end-to-end encryption it can monitor your conversations.

If you want to communicate privately with others, then by far the best option (short of meeting in person and whispering) is to use a secure end-to-end messaging app.

This means that messages and voice conversations are encrypted on your phone, and can only be read or listened to on the intended recipient’s phone. No trust in a third party is required.

The most well-regarded such app among privacy and security experts is Signal, from Open Whisper Systems. Check out our full Signal Review to find out why.

A Google-free version of Signal can now be downloaded directly from Open Whisper Systems

How Do I Set up a VPN for Android?

Many, if not most, VPN providers offer custom Android apps. Simply download them from the Play Store and sign up when the usual free trial expires, or sign-in with your existing account details. If you are going Google-free, most good VPN services will allow you to download the .apk file for their apps if you ask them.

As I discussed earlier, just be sure to download a reputable VPN app!

Most decent VPN providers also provide setup guides for manually configuring their services on your Android device. Even so, I’ll outline the main steps below.

PPTP and L2TP/IPsec Manual Setup

Android comes with a VPN client baked right into the operating system. This VPN client can be manually configured with a provider’s settings in order to run a VPN using the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) and Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP)/Internet Protocol Security (IPSec) VPN protocols. If you don’t know what these are, please check out VPN Encryption: The Complete Guide.

1. Go to Settings –> More networks -> VPN. Note that you are required to set up a lock screen for this. If you have not already done so, just follow the prompts.

2. Touch + to Add VPN network. Enter a name for your VPN connection, choose Type, and enter the details given by your VPN provider.

PPTP setup is ridiculously easy, but is horribly insecure, so don’t bother.

L2TP/IPsec setup is still pretty easy, but is much more secure. It usually requires you to enter a long, pre-shared key (preferably unique)

3. Check you are connected.

The key icon in the taskbar lets you know that you are connected to a VPN server

OpenVPN Manual Setup for Android

OpenVPN is now the industry standard VPN protocol. It is the one that BestVPN.com recommends you use under almost any circumstances.

The main third-party OpenVPN apps for Android are OpenVPN Connect and the more fully featured and open source OpenVPN for Android. Below are instructions for configuring OpenVPN for Android, which now features full Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4), Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) and Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) leak protection.

1. Download the OpenVPN configuration files from your VPN provider’s website. Unzip them (if required) and transfer to a folder on your Android device. Alternatively, download them directly to your Android device and unzip them with an app such as ZArchiver.

2. Download, install and run OpenVPN for Android (if you haven’t already). Touch the + icon to the top right of the screen to Add Profile. Give the profile a suitable name, then hit “Import.”

3. Navigate to the folder where you saved the unzipped OpenVPN config file(s), and choose a server (.ovpn file). Once imported, touch the tick ✔ icon to continue.

4. Once done, you’ll see the server name under the Profiles tab. To start the VPN, just touch it. You can import .ovpn files for as many servers as you like, and they will show up here.

Many providers include all necessary keys and account information in customized .ovpn files, so no further configuration is needed. Others may require that you enter your account information and other details. Please see your provider’s documentation for specific instructions.

It is also possible to configure OpenVPN to act as a kill switch. Please see A Complete Guide to IP Leaks for instructions on how to do this.

Best VPNs for Android: Conclusion

Mobile phones are not privacy-friendly, and never will be. With a VPN and various other steps, however, they can be made much more privacy-friendly, especially if you use online services via their websites rather than their apps.

A VPN will also protect you from public WiFi hackers and allow you to access many service that are otherwise blocked based on where you are.

Given that a good VPN service typically costs just a few bucks each month, it is silly not to use one!

Three Best Phone Tracker Apps

2017-10-02T13:53:00.001+05:30

Many phones tracking apps for kids are available on the market, making people wonder which cell tracker apps have the greatest level of performance and provide an excellent user-friendly interface with numerous features. This review focuses on three best phone tracker apps. People worldwide prefer purchasing programs with an excellent feedback records left by happy customers worldwide. This review gives chances to estimate dependability of a cell phone app. Discover more about compatibility, functionality, features. These factors allow examine how each mobile tracker app works and what it has to offer, making it easier to identify software that best suits your spying needs. Read more about mobile phone tracking legalityon Wikipedia.

What does it mean “The Best Cell Phone Tracker App”?

This is an app for apple iPhones, iPods, iPads. It operates on Nokia Symbian, BlackBerry, Android devices (including Samsung), Windows phones that use Verizon or T-Mobile. A free trial version of FlexiSPY, which is a satellite-tracking suit that provides a broad range of features, is available on its official website. Two different versions of this program are available for users to choose from. The Extreme Version and Premium one. The Premium Version provides basic functions of FlexiSpy, while an Extreme Version offers advanced and unique features of FlexiSPY that other versions lacks.

mSpy (Powerful Phone Tracker)

Concerning parental control capabilities, this stingray mSpy cell phone tracker is rated as the best. It does not have a jailbreak solution, however. This makes it easier to track an iPad or iPhone without jailbreaking it. Most importantly, nothing needs to be installed on the targeted device, one only needs to have the credentials of the iCloud account registered on the device.

DOWNLOAD MSPY READ REVIEW

This spyware is compatible with Android and iOS devices, making full use of a control panel that is encrypted. Thus, it has an extra layer of security to log cell phone activity. mSpy is an international user-friendly mobile tracking app. This implies that users may track, gathering data and information about the targeted people’s activity. Most importantly, the process is straightforward and simple.

An installation process of the mSpy app is easy, uncomplicated and takes a few minutes before the program is installed and you are ready to go! MSpy informs user about any issues that concern the program itself. To handle these issues, this application has a customer support service operating around the clock via email, skype, live chat or phone. To make sure that users remain satisfied with mSpy experience there is a 10-day money back guarantee.

mSpy App Phone Tracker Features

This software allows users to block applications and websites. Parents enjoy this spectacular software suit by blocking apps and websites they do not approve for their kids’ use.

Restricting incoming phone calls. The software allows users to block certain phone numbers, preventing contacts from calling the mobile device under tracking.
mSpy has keylogging function, this feature is exclusive for Android devices that records all keystrokes on the cell phone.
mSpy has geofencing feature. Users set territory specifications, getting alerted if the targeted person leaves a predefined territory.
View incoming and outgoing SMS messages and emails
Use GPS locator to track the location of the mobile device.
Access information on social networks, such as Facebook.

The mSpy app divides into three unique yet very accessible subscription packages: Basic, Premium, Business. This tracking app has a free online demo. It shows the entire set of features of this program suit, allowing potential buyers to evaluate its functionality before a purchase. This demo gives an opportunity to know more about the functionality of the software, determining whether it suits your needs.

FlexiSPY (best phone tracker app)

This is an app for iPhones, iPods, and iPads. It can also work in Nokia Symbian, BlackBerry, and Android devices. FlexiSPY is a tracking app that entails a wide range of features. With this software, users can choose from two versions. They are the Extreme Version and the Premium Version. The Premium Version forms the basic foundation of flexiSpy. The Extreme Version presents the advanced features of FlexSPY that the other version lacks.

DOWNLOAD FLEXISPY READ REVIEW

FlexiSPY Extreme Version features

Call intercept: This feature allows users to eavesdrop on live cell phone conversations. The individual being targeted is not aware that he/she is being monitored.
Call Recording on the target mobile device: this mobile tracker app records all outgoing and incoming phone calls. Users may access recordings within the app’s online control panel anytime whenever they have an internet access.
The software supports recording of surroundings. Users may record surrounding sounds.
The recording is then uploaded to online control panel making users able to listen to what is taking place as it occurs.
FlexiSPY has a password cracker feature. It enables users to access all passwords for installed applications. Get login details for emails and social media from the target mobile devices.
The software has a remCam feature. This secret tracker app for apple iPhone allows users to take control over the target cell phone camera. Users may take photos which are uploaded to online control panel afterward.
GPS location tracker. The tracker enables users to locate stolen cell phone signal location on a map, making a real-time tracking of the family members’ mobile devices easy.

This tracker app supports remote control of the targeted lost mobile device. You can perform this from a remote location. Using this feature, users are able to restart the targeted mobile device and view a battery status of the device and send SMS messages.

FlexiSPY’s Extreme Version is the best because it provides an unrivaled spying experience for its subscribers. You can view all logs inside the account holder’s dashboard. Using a smartphone, customers may access information on the program’s web-based control panel. They may use a tablet or a computer as long as it has a stable and fast enough internet connection.

Highster Mobile Spy (cheapest phone tracker)

This app is considered to be the best phone tracking app. Highster app is used in tablets and android phones. The software tracks and monitors all activities in your target mobile device. Users may use the app to track their target mobile device remotely. This includes viewing all logged activities on the web-based control panel. The installation process of this phone tracking app is simple and easy. There is no rooting of the device needed. The only time users need to have the target mobile device installation time. Users may complete the process by connecting the mobile device to a computer or using its web browser.

Download Highster Mobile READ REVIEW

Highster Mobile Phone Tracker

This smart program is known as the best phone tracking app used with tablets and Android phones all around the Australia. The software tracks and monitors activity on targeted mobile device. People may use this tool to track their spouse’s targeted mobile device remotely. This includes viewing all logged events on the web-based control panel that has all necessary indicators. Most users find this up on google. Download and installation process of this phone-tracking app is straightforward and easy. There is no rooting of the device needed, clients need to access targeted mobile devices only during the installation process. People can complete this process by connecting the mobile device to a computer or using its web browser.

Highster Mobile Phone Tracker features

Easy accessibility to a camera of a targeted device. A possibility to take photos;
Lock down the phone remotely or uninstall applications;
Track a battery status of the targeted mobile device;
Easy reverse access to the targeted cell phone’s notes, calendar, contacts;
Access videos and photos;
Log all outgoing and incoming calls;
It is an SMS tracker app for iPhone. This means one can access all text messages both received and sent;
Use Highster Mobile GPS location tracker to trace locations of your targets;
Log emails, both received and sent;
View a browsing history. This means that users have a chance to view a browsing history.

The software allows viewing IM chats and Social media networks, for example: Twitter, Skype, Viber, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp.

Security flaw found in Broadcom chipset allows hackers to hijack WiFi connected iPhones

2017-10-02T13:44:00.000+05:30

According to a report from Google Project Zero, a security flaw has been found in iPhones and other devices that use Broadcom Wi-Fi chips. The weakness allows a hacker to remotely take over the device knowing only the MAC address or network-port ID. Since the MAC address of a connected device is easily obtained, it is considered a serious threat.

The report, "Broadcom: OOB write when handling 802.11k Neighbor Report Response," appeared on Google’s Chromium developer site a few months back. It was written by Gal Beniamini, the same person that found a similar vulnerability back in April. Beniamini says that the flaw exists on Broadcom chips running firmware version BCM4355C0.

The weakness can be exploited using a software hack. His exploit was tested on iOS 10.2 but he says it should work on all versions up to iOS 10.3.3. If you are running iOS 11, which just released on September 19, you should be safe as Apple has addressed the issue. However, it has not said when or if patches for earlier versions of iOS will be available.

"I've been able to verify that this code path exists on various different firmware versions, including those present on the iPhone 7 and Galaxy S7 Edge."

iPhones aren't the only devices at risk. Beniamini has confirmed that Apple TV, Android phones (including the S7 Edge), select routers and smart TVs are also "at risk." Apple says it has patched the problem in the most recent version of tvOS. Likewise, Google reports that it has addressed the issue on Nexus and Pixel devices.

Beniamini reported the issue to Broadcom and device makers in June and shared an exploit in August. It only became public today.

Other Android manufacturers should have patches forthcoming (if not already rolled out). As always, it's a good idea to keep your connected devices up to date.

A former Google engineer founded a religion that is developing an AI god

2017-10-02T13:41:00.000+05:30

Here’s some news that's likely to give Elon Musk a heart attack: a former Google engineer has founded a religious organization that seeks to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence.”

Anthony Levandowski co-founded self-driving trucking company Otto, which Uber acquired for $680 million in 2016. He became head of engineering for the ride-hailing firm’s autonomous vehicle division, and made headlines after being fired in May following allegations he stole trade secrets from former employer Google.

It seems Levandowski could now become more famous for his nonprofit religious entity, called Way of the Future, which he founded in September 2015. Wired’s Backchannel discovered previously unreported state filings that reveal the corporation aims “through understanding and worship of the Godhead, [to] contribute to the betterment of society.”

While Way of the Future has yet to submit forms with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to qualify as a tax-exempt religious organization, the documents do show Levandowski as its CEO and president.

AI gods may sound like the stuff of sci-fi, Anime, and computer games, but it’s certainly a concept likely to appeal to the futurists and transhumanists of Silicon Valley more than traditional religions.

Elon Musk is one CEO unlikely to welcome the move toward self-aware artificial life and the singularity. The Tesla boss was one of many experts to create OpenAi, a nonprofit that makes sure AI development is regulated. He also joined 116 other experts calling for a ban on “killer robots" recently, and said AI was humanity’s “biggest existential threat” and “more dangerous than North Korea.” Hopefully, his words won't come back to haunt us when everybody's forced to worship an all-seeing robotic god.

15 Super Useful Apps for Busy Entrepreneurs

2012-12-03T19:49:00.002+05:30

Since the launch of Apple's App Store in 2008 there has been a flood of smartphone apps all with the intention of making our lives easier. Because of these apps we can find out instantly what song is playing on the radio without having to be told, we can know the square roots of pi is to the 137th decimal, and much more.

Take a look at this list of other useful apps. They might teach you about something you didn't know before or help to make your life just a bit easier.

Jasmine, a better YouTube player.

Kevin Smith, Business Insider

Jasmine is a minimal YouTube app replacement. We love how Jasmine allows us to play YouTube audio in the background, freeing us up to do other things with our phone.
The app is chock-full of features including a nighttime/low light function, full playlist support, and Airplay, Apple's feature for streaming audio and video to your living room

Price: Free

Available on: iOS

Catch is a fun way to take voice, photo and text notes.

Catch helps you capture your most important ideas so you never miss anything. You can create voice, photo, and text notes, online and offline. It's incredibly easy to share checklists to collaborate with others, too.

For those worried about security, users can protect notes with a four-digit PIN.

Price: Free

Available on: Android and iPhone

Slice helps you track and organize all your online shopping.

Slice

Besides being an awesome package tracker, Slice is an app that helps you stay on top of all your online purchases.
The app securely scans your email and finds receipts from iTunes, Amazon, and wherever else you shop online creating great archive of purchases.

Price: Free

Available on: Android and iOS

SwiftKey for Android is a keyboard replacement that might replace your old keyboard.

Business Insider / Matthew Lynley

Swift Key can change how you type on your Android. The app automatically detects how you've typed in the past -- from text messaging, mail, chat, Twitter and a few other services -- and serves up suggestions on what you're going to say.

Price: $3.99

Available on: Android

Check the Weather is handy for tracking changes in the weather.

Kevin Smith/Business Insider

Check the Weather provides a beautiful interface to view the weather in your current location or favorite city. The app provides a 10-day outlook, precipitation stats, and even weather advisories.

Price: $1.99

Available on: iOS

Use Prismatic to stay on top of the news you care about.

Prismatic is a news reading app that strips away clutter like ads and presents you with a simple, easy-to-read interface. Think of it as Instapaper meets Flipboard.

As you use Prismatic the app gets to know you, delivering the stories you're likely to care about based on your interests. The app knows your interests based on the articles you've read and the topics you've chosen. It also shows you Twitter commentary on articles from the people you follow.

Price: Free

Available on: iPhone and Web

Shazam: Know exactly what song is playing.

iTunes

How many times have you wanted to know what song is playing but you have no way of figuring it out? We remember the first time we used Shazam and it just worked.
We're still amazed every time it works.

Price: Free

Available on: Android,Blackberry, iOS, and Windows Phone.

Evernote: Search scanned documents.

Mac App Store

Evernote's goal is to help you remember everything. The app organizes and tags your most important notes. The feature that makes Evernote super smart is its ability to search any scanned file or document.

Price: Free

Available on: Android,Blackberry, iOS, Windows Phone, Web OS, PC, Mac,Google Chrome, and the web.

Robin for Android: A driver-friendly version of Siri.

Robin is an Android version of Siri. You can ask Robin for directions, local places, real-time parking, traffic info, gas prices, weather, your Twitter news and much more.

Robin was built with drivers in mind, it is most useful when behind the wheel because she helps you to keep your eyes on the road and off of your device.

Price: Free

Available on: Android

Nike+: Have a record of where you ran and how long it took you.

Before Nike+, runners never really knew exactly how far they ran. This smart app allows you to track your distance, calories burned and pace.

The best part? All the information is logged across multiple runs letting you know how well you're doing.

Price: Free

Available on: Android andiOS.

WolframAlpha: The computer's computer.

The WolframAlpha app essentially takes the entire WolframAlpha site and crams it into your iPhone, iPad or Android. WolframAlpha can answer questions on math, statistics, data analysis, physics, chemistry, engineering and more.

Price: $3.99

Available on: Android andiOS

Apex Launcher for Android takes your customization even further.

Apex Launcher is a fast and customizable launcher for your Android's home screen. Apex helps you to customize your Android's grid size and allows you to have nine different pages. In addition, users can create a scrollable dock with up to 7 icons per page.

Price: Free

Available on: Android

Notability: Voice recording and handwriting integration for your notes.

Notability integrates handwriting, voice recording, PDF annotation and media into a single app. You can even enhance your notes by adding pictures from your photo library or from the iPad camera. Insert web clips, figures, and drawings to compliment your notes. Crop, resize, and draw on images to make them perfect.

Price: $0.99

Available on: iOS

Google Chrome: All your tabs from all your devices in one place.

Google Chrome is a smart app because it allows users to sync web pages across multiple computers. Now when we pick up our iPhone, Android or iPad we can still see exactly what we were looking at on our desktop.

Price: Free

Available on: Android, iOS, and Mac and PC

Spoken Layer: You can listen instead of read.

iTunes

Spoken layer converts an entire webpage into a podcast for easy listening. The app makes it possible for you to listen to articles while on a walk or commuting.

Price: Free

Available on: iOS

eToro Snags a World Finance Award for Most Innovative Trading Platform

2012-09-08T22:51:00.000+05:30

eToro Snags a World Finance Award for Most Innovative Trading Platform 2010

The eToro platform, already a trader favorite, has now received a nod of appreciation from the financial trading industry as a winner of one of World Finance's prestigious annual awards.

eToro's (www.etoro.com) innovative approach to financial trading has been making waves for quite some time now among traders worldwide. The platform's user friendly graphic interfaces and wide range of ground breaking community tools have captured the attentions of novices and experts alike, who now take part in eToro's vibrant and active social trading network. With its open and daring approach, eToro has now managed to not only become one of the most popular trading platforms online, but to also receive a seal of approval from an already established financial institution.
“Our vision is to become the first global market place for everyone to trade and invest their funds in a simple and transparent way”, said eToro CEO, Johnathan Assia. “eToro already transformed the way people trade today, and we thank our community of over a million traders for helping us win this award that recognizes eToro's achievements in the financial trading arena”
World Finance magazine launched its annual World Finance Awards in 2007 with the goal of identifying industry leaders that represent the benchmark of achievement and best practice in the financial and business world. To determine the winners, World Finance magazine used an independent panel of judges headed up by Editor Alexander Redcliffe. The Panel followed up on the countless nominations, suggestions and contributions of World Finance readers to explore and analyze new trends in order to unearth the best and the brightest pioneers in the FX marketplace.
“We couldn't be more thrilled and honored to win this particular award,” said Assia. “To know that our platform was nominated and then chosen out of the hundreds of nominations is a sign that we must be doing something right. It is especially rewarding to know that our push towards innovation, which has been one of eToro's core values from the start, hasn't gone unnoticed. The challenge now is to keep innovating so we can have a shot at next year's award as well!”
As for eToro's community, they will certainly be thrilled to know that their platform of choice is leading the way in cutting edge trading technologies, and intends to continue to do so for years to come.
Open a free trading account with eToro to explore the benefits of financial trading

Top 10 Simple Things Every Computer User Should Know How to Do

2012-09-08T22:03:00.000+05:30

No matter how tech savvy you are, there are certain things every one of us has to deal with when using a computer, but we don't always deal with them in the most efficient ways. Here are 10 things that everyone can—and should—learn to keep their computer fast, safe, and easy to use.

Here at Lifehacker, we take a lot of the simpler stuff for granted: how to avoid viruses, use keyboard shortcuts, or even just keep your data backed up. Even if you've mastered all of these tricks (and there's a good chance you haven't), you may want to send this along to some of your less computer-savvy friends. After all, the more they know how to do, the less they'll call you for help.

10. Set Up a Dead Simple Backup System

We all know we should back up our computers, but it's always one of those things that you'll set up "one day". Setting up a backup only takes minutes to do, though, so you can do it right know and forget about it until you need it—and when you do need it, you'll be glad you set it up. If you're just backing up to an external drive, you can just use the simple tools built in to your computer, like Windows Backup or Apple's Time Machine. However, that'll only keep you safe if your computer fails. If you lose your home in a fire, get all your gear stolen, or experience any other kind of disaster (God forbid), you'll have lost all those important documents, family photos, and other files forever. So, we recommend using a service likeCrashPlan to back up your computer online. That way, it can back up no matter where you are, and that data will be safe no matter what happens to your hardware.

9. Do Everything Faster with Shortcuts

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The great thing about computers is that they can do a lot of things much faster than a human. Say you're looking for a specific word on a web page. Instead of scanning it yourself, all you need to do is press Ctrl+F and type the word you're looking for. There are mountains of shortcut like this, from pressing Ctrl+S to instantly save the file you're working on, Ctrl+P to print it out, or Ctrl+T to open a new tab in your web browser. It may seem like more trouble than its worth at first, but after you use a shortcut one or two times, you'll wonder why you ever did anything with the mouse. Check out our list of six shortcuts everyone should know, as well as ourshortcut of the day series for even more tricks.

8. Protect Yourself From Viruses

Windows users have long known the pain of viruses and other malware, but the good news is it's pretty easy to avoid. First, we recommend learning the difference between viruses, trojans, and other kinds of attacks, as well as the myths surrounding them. Then, install some good antivirus software to protect yourself (Microsoft Security Essentials is our favorite—you won't even know it's there). You can even get antivirus for your Android phone, if you so choose. But in the end, the best way to avoid viruses is to use common sense: don't open links that look suspicious, don't install programs from untrusted sources, and if a window pops up saying your computer's infected, make sure it's actually your antivirus software saying that and not a fake web page.

7. Set Up Your Network (and Fix Wi-Fi Problems)

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Understanding routers, modems, and the other things that make up your network can seem daunting, but there are a few basics that can fix most problems that come your way. Does your router constantly need resetting? Make sure it isn't overheating or clogged with traffic. Is your Wi-Fi speed and range less than ideal? Use one of these tricks to give it a boost. If you experience more serious problems, you can probably fix them yourself too. Check out our complete guide to knowing your network for more info—it's got everything you need to know, from buying a router to setting up your network and more.

6. Keep Your Batteries Lasting as Long as Possible

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Running out of battery on your phone or laptop can be pretty frustrating, but luckily, you can do a lot of things to keep it lasting longer. Your laptop has a lot of built-in power settings that can come in really handy, and there are a few tricks on both Android and the iPhone that will eke some extra time out of your battery. And, if you want your battery to retain that life, make sure you know how often to charge it to keep it alive in the years ahead.

5. Access Your Home Computer From Anywhere

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Ever go out with your laptop and realize you left something important on your computer at home? One way to solve this problem is to use a service like Dropbox, so your files are with you everywhere you go. However, it's also handy to know how to use your home computer from anywhere. With a simple app, you can log into your home computer from another machine and use it as if you were sitting right at your desk—whether you just need to grab a quick file or access a program you don't have elsewhere.

4. Keep Your Computer in Tip Top Shape with Regular Maintenance

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Computer maintenance has gotten really confusing over the years. Between defragging, cleaning up temporary files, and other tasks, it's almost like trying to maintain a car. Luckily, it's gotten a lot easier in recent years: you only really need to do one or two things to keep your computer running fast and smooth. Check out our guides to Windows maintenance and Mac maintenance for more info and keep your PC running like new. And if your phone's feeling a little sluggish, we have guides for iOS and Android, too.

3. Instantly Share a File Between Two Computers

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So you've got some files you want to give to your friend sitting next to you, but your flash drive has mysteriously gone missing. Well guess what? You don't need it! It's very easy to transfer a file between two computers over your wireless (or wired) network, whether it's between you and a friend or between multiple computers you own. Here are our favorite ways to share files with a nearby computer, but if you want to share them between multiple computers in your house, Windows 7's Homegroup feature is a great option. Of course, this is where the aforementioned Dropboxapp can come in handy, too. And if you're sharing larger files over the internet, there are great ways to do that too.

2. Easily Find Your Lost or Stolen Gadgets

You never know when you might misplace your phone, laptop, or other tech, so set up some safeguards now. iPhones have an easy-to-use feature called Find My iPhone that'll help you track it if it goes missing, but we're big fans of an app called Prey. With it, you can track nearly any laptop or smartphone that's gone missing, and even get a photo of who might be using it. If you're missing a camera, the CameraTrace service can help you find it, too. Of course, the best solution is making sure it doesn't get stolen in the first place, and making sure all your personal data is locked down. Which brings us to our last tip...

1. Keep Your Personal Information Safe and Secure

Unfortunately, the internet isn't always a safe place, which means everyone needs to make sure they're keeping their personal information safe. Make sure you use strong passwords, remove personal information from photos and other files, and never use open public Wi-Fi networks without protection. Keeping your personal information safe is easier than it sounds, and if you aren't sure what to do, check out our checklist for staying safe online. You'd be surprised how unsafe you were being before.

Adopted from LifeHacker

Looking to harness the power of financial markets?

2012-09-05T22:50:00.002+05:30

Looking to harness the power of financial markets?
Heard about financial trading and want to try it for yourself?

eToro is the place for you. It's a financial trading and investing platform that puts you at the centre of financial markets. With the world's largest community of financial traders, a simplified trading platform and up to $10,000 extra to trade with on your first deposit, you get much more with eToro.

What Can eToro Offer:

An outstanding user experience: Never miss your entry price, due to
market fluctuation.

An exclusive social trading network: The eToro OpenBook connects you to one million eToro traders, the world’s largest trading community and lets you see, follow and copy the trades of any trader you choose.

Trading education: An exclusive eToro eCourse and learning tools get you from trading zero to pro — fast.

Free Practice Trial: Take eToro for a spin – for free – and build your trading skills and experience without risking a cent.

Personal Service: Dedicated help and support for every eToro investor.

Open a Free eToro account now!

A Great Trading Experience For Every Investor

With its easy to use platform, exciting trade visualizations and outstanding learning resources, eToro is the perfect platform for a newbie trader who’s looking to discover financial trading. Because eToro offers features specially designed for beginners, like its Visual trading mode and the ability to copy the trades of the best traders through the eToro OpenBook, it enables everyone to start getting the benefit of trading for themselves from day one.

With its great array of professional trading and analysis tools, eToro is also the perfect platform for more experienced traders who want an intuitive and reliable trading platform together with lots of innovative community features. eToro’s regular Trading Challenges enable every user to compete against fellow traders for cash prizes of up to $100,000 per month on top of their regular trading activity. The eToro OpenBook social trading network lets experienced traders interact with each other to share trading tips and insights and find market opportunities.

Currency Trading With eToro

The Forex trading market is the world's most talked about financial market. Millions of people are now trying currency trading for themselves because of the unlimited profit potential it offers together with the freedom to control their investment strategy for themselves. eToro is open for Forex trading 24 hours a day, five and a half days a week for traders from anywhere in the world. It offers competitively low spreads on the trades you make as well as all the leverage you want up to 400x. That's why more people chose eToro for Forex trading than any other company.

Commodities and Indices Trading With eToro

As well as providing outstanding currency trading eToro delivers the best of commodities and indices trading as well. Trade the precious metals Gold and Silver, Oil and popular indices like the Dow Jones, NASDAQ and FTSE 100 straight from the eToro platform. eToro takes the pain out of investing in these asset classes by offering 24 hour trading and simplified trading contracts leaving you free to concentrate on your trading instead of on reading the small print.

Open a Free account with eToro and join the world's most rewarding trading community.

Five Top Tips to Find Current Blog Content

2012-08-20T21:59:00.001+05:30

In the world of sales it helps if you are selling something that people want to buy, and if you are a blog owner then you are in the world of sales.

The word sale does not necessarily mean that it has to have a financial jingle to it. On the contrary, by merely writing and publishing a story, for free, you are still selling. You are still desperately hoping someone will read it.

But how do you know what people want to buy? Here are five top tips for finding current content.

1. Google Zeitgeist

Google Zeitgeist is the home of all things trendy. Zeitgeist is the word used to describe, “What the world is talking about.”

Now the world is a big place and Google Zeitgeist does what it can to sort it’s billions of search enquiries into list formats such as The Fastest Rising and Fastest Fallingtopics.

At the end of 2011 the fastest falling search was Myspace and so to write an article about Myspace may not be the greatest of ideas, where writing something interesting about Rebecca Black may well pull forth more readers.

2. Google Insights for Search

Another gem from Google is Google Insights for Search. This little beauty allows you to filter searches by geographical area, categories, seasonality and lots, lots more.

I have recently noticed, that despite writing my blog from within the UK my audience is primarily from the United States. Google Insights for Search allows me to see what American web users are interested in thus allowing me to write material that they want to read.

3. Google Analytics

If you have been a blog owner for quite some time then you need some analytical software like Google Analytics. You should spend at least one day per month browsing the data on your own blog to see what articles are interesting to people and write more of the same.

Also look through your comments and see which articles are creating more input from your readers. Once again this is a great way of understanding what your readers are interested in.

4. Amazon Best Selling Books

The ebook is on the rise, but it is still print books that are the most popular form of reading material on the planet. Figuring out what type of fiction people are reading will help you come up with content ideas.

Currently the Amazon Best Selling section is being dominated by E. L. James and the Fifty Shades of Grey series. So there is a market for lonely housewives desperate for a little bit of bondage. Great if you have a bondage site and if not why not start one?

5. ClickBank Trends

ClickBank Trends is another research and analytical tool that can help you find everything that people are interested in. There is a section called “More Gravity Clickbank Products” that groups the most sought after products on the net. Search your own niche and see what is selling like a hot cake?

Demonoid hit by DDoS attack

2012-08-17T21:58:00.000+05:30

Demonoid has been hit by a massive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, bringing down the famous BitTorrent tracker to its knees. The torrent website has been inaccessible to its millions of users for more than a day and is expected to remain offline for quite some time.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Demonoid is currently serving up the following error message:

Server too busy
The action you requested could not be completed because the server is too busy.
Please try again in a few minutes
Do not click reload - Use the following links
Clicking reload will get you this page again
Click here to return to the homepage or Click here to go back

I said this attack was "massive" because it has resulted in a series of problems that may take a while to address. Over the years, Demonoid has been down many times, sometimes disappearing for months.

"It started as a DDoS but then it caused a series of problems," Demonoid's admin toldTorrentFreak. "These problems need to be fixed before the site can go back up, and it’s a complicated fix this time. There might have been an attack from another angle, an exploit of sorts, but it’s hard to tell right now without a full check of everything. Our human resources became limited in the last few months. All tech issues are handled just by me now and there is no one else to take the job. I’ll fix the site as soon as possible, but it might be a while this time."

It's currently unclear whether or not the attack against Demonoid was anti-piracy related. Either way, Demonoid's users have to find an alternative for their downloading needs while they wait for its return.

http://www.zdnet.com/demonoid-hit-by-ddos-attack-7000001732/

Some great Wordpress plugins, that you too should try

2012-08-11T09:23:00.000+05:30

WordPress, currently being the most powerful blogging platform has got its fame for its excellence in content management. It is quite factual that several WordPress bloggers are shining out like superstars. So, what is the reason behind the success of these WordPress sites? With some well chosen and quite interesting plugins, your WordPress site will get a new fresh air and feel. In this article, I`ll showcase some nice WordPress plugins which have to be a must for your site!

Social Plugins

Get Social

GetSocial adds an intelligent, lightweight, quick to setup floating social media sharing box on your blog posts. It allows your WordPress posts get published on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. It is up to you to configure to each social networking site and select options to enable or disable for publishing.

Slick Social Share Button

Slick Social Share buttons is a WordPress plugins that comes with social sharing buttons to add Facebook, Twitter, Google +1, Linkedin, digg, reddit, buffer, stumbleupon and Pinterest to your WordPress blog. You have options to add these buttons either in a sliding panel or floating panel. If you are looking for a way to improvise your blog’s traffic, then this plugin can be the perfect choice.

Facebook Comments

This is again a WordPress – social plugin that allows your blog’s visitor to leave comments on your blog’s post by means of their Facebook profile (if logged in). Your visitors can also post their comments on their Facebook wall, by which your blog drives more traffic and exposure.

Disqus Comment System

Disqus is a cool WordPress plugin that is purposely used for comments and discussions. With this plugin, commenting among your blog is made easier, interactive and flexible. The plugin is SEO friendly and hence the comments are made visible on search engines. It also provides options to subscribe RSS feeds. The plugin exclusively filters spam comments, which is the ultimate thing with any blog.

Twitter @AnyWhere

This is a WordPress- Twitter Plugin that lets your blog’s visitors to tweet about your post or anything, directly from being at your blog. It is not needed for the visitor to leave your blog, since the plugin is directly available on your blog. It allows you to embed a box where you can preset the tweet button.

Entertainment Plugins

EmbedPlus for WordPress

This WordPress plugin allows you to embed YouTube videos to your WordPress blog. In addition to the features of YouTube’s standard embed, the plugin also comes with few extra options like relevant user generated content and video reactions from communities like Google+ and Reddit.

Mac Photo Gallery

Mac Photo Gallery is a WordPress plugin that allows you to upload images and create multiple albums in a Mac Dock effect. These albums are displayed in a smooth gallery slideshow. Facebook options for download, share and comment also come along with this plugin. You can also import albums from your Flickr and Picasa albums.

WordPress Video Gallery

WordPress Video Gallery is a WordPress plugin that comes with an in-built HDFLV player. With this plugin, YouTube videos can be added easily to your site. It supports HTML5 to let you play videos in IOS devices. Video commenting, video description and video tag features come along.

Smart YouTube

This WordPress plugin lets you to play videos from YouTube, Vimeo and Metacafe. It supports all latest high quality video protocols like 360p and HD quality 720p. The videos can be viewed in full-screen with xHTML valid codes.

SEO Plugins

Google Analyticator

This WordPress plugin comes with the option to view all Google stats of your WordPress blog. With the corresponding JavaScript, you can enable Google Analytics logging on your WordPress blog. Google analyticator tracks everything that is stats on your site. Almost all advanced Google tracking codes are supported by this plugin.

All In One SEO Pack

The plugin comes with all that is SEO. With this complete SEO pack, you get Google Analytics support, support for custom post types, fine tune page navigational links, and advanced canonical URLs. It has an in-built API, so that the other plugins and themes can access and extend functionality.

Google XML Sitemaps

Google XML Sitemaps is a WordPress plugin that generates a special XML sitemap that helps your blog or site to rank well in search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com.

Blog Management Plugins

WordPress Database Backup

It is a WordPress plugin that maintains a backup of your WordPress database. This plugin allows you to easily backup the content from your WordPress Database table.

WordPress Editorial Calendar

This plugin allows you to filter posts based on the dates on which they were posted. The blog posts can be dragged and dropped from one date to another. There is a new drafts drawer to manage your drafts. You can see the status of your posts and manage the posts from multiple users.

So, these are only a few of the best but interesting WordPress plugins that you can give a try. There are more, of course and if you know some other plugins which you use and think they shouldn`t be missed from any wp installation, don`t hesitate to share them with us!

5 Unusual Things to Consider at a Web Host

2012-07-25T09:56:00.002+05:30

Nowadays, when technology development is moving faster than light, more and more people are switching from the offline lifestyle we all know to the more entertaining and interesting online environment. Nowadays, more and more people have a website. Some are running blogs, just for sharing their thoughts and opinions, while others are using them for business purposes. If you`re not having a website already, you should think seriously at this, because can bring you benefits you didn`t know about. If you don`t know already, a website has to be hosted somewhere, where some people can take care of it in order to keep it live and running on the internet. Therefore, choosing the right web hosting service for the websites you have can bring you some headaches.

Not all websites are the same. They can be build on many platforms, because their purpose can be different. Every individual platform requires special treatment, that`s why you have to know if the web host you`ll choose can really host your website without affecting its integrity.

1. CPU Usage

Every server runs on a processor, which is divided in CPUs(Central Processing Units). In other words, the processor is the server`s brain, being responsive for interpreting and executing commands which come from hardware and software. Many web hosts are advertising unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth, but how can they be unlimited when the physical devices like servers are limited? There are, of course, some limits.

If your website is getting a very big amount of traffic in one day and the server will get overhead, your website will be shutted down. This is because your server was eating too many server resources, which are these CPUs. If you`ll search for “Unlimited CPU Usage” in a web host plans, you won`t find it, because no one can guarantee it, therefore, make sure to carefully read the terms and conditions of every plan when signing in.

2. Amount of Uploaded Files

The “Unlimited Storage” feature offered by many web hosting companies it is and actually can be calledunlimited web hosting. How many GB of data can you really upload for a website to run? You won`t need more than 10GB, but what happens if there are too many FILES uploaded? The big challenge for every web hosting company is to host as many websites they can on their servers. So, the problem is reduced to keeping the servers healthy.

The company will limit the number of uploaded files in order to limit the resources used by the server. If you`re having some websites running on WordPress, which is a CMS and uses a lot of files, combined with some Plugins, you might reach the file limit and the unlimited storage promised will be for you just a myth.

3. Server Location

Every web host is actually a company which is running the activity of hosting websites on some servers based in a city or region of a country. If your website is targeting visitors or clients based in Europe and the servers on which the website is hosted are based in USA, they will experience extra time on loading pages or downloading things. We all hate waiting for a web page to load and you don`t want to loose clients because they closed the still loading website.

Therefore, if you`re running a local business, is better to orientate to local hosting companies which will deliver your ewebsite fast. Plus, speed is very important for SEO and will get you ranked better than competitors with websites hosted on foreign countries.

4. Server Environment Control

Beware of web hosts that cannot assure you at least a basic server environment control. What`s this all about? Make sure you get a proper admin panel(cPanel, Plesk) which has to be intuitive and feature rich. Make sure you can control things like SSH, PHP or .htaccess settings and that database managing environment is flexible enough. A good web hosting platform will let you access reports referred to website visitors, bandwidth usage and storage usage, important things when it comes to website optimization.

5. Hidden Prices

At the end of the day, it`s all about the money. Do not think that you made a great deal by choosing a web hosting plan which doesn`t cost more than $5/month. The cheapest plans are also features poor. You`ll probably get a few GB of data transfer, very limited email accounts and MySql databases and probably nothing else. But you might think that you`ve just created your website and there aren`t so many people visiting it.

But things might change, right? With time, your traffic will increase, your business might grow and without a doubt, your web hosting bill will be bigger than $5. At some point you might need additional bandwidth because of the bigger traffic, additional MySQL databases and more features like WordPress installs, Back-ups and Cron Jobs, dedicated IP address, more email accounts, etc, which will make you pay at least $20 each month. Therefore, make sure to think on a long term or to see if you can easily upgrade your hosting plan with a better one.

Conclusion

There are probably many more things to know about web hosting before choosing a plan for your website. In many cases they are strongly linked to the purpose of the website, that`s why you should firstly know what your website requires to run smoothly and then pick the right web host. If you know any more things to look for at a webhost, don`t hesitate to share them with us!

Steam On Mobile Is Going Places

2012-05-28T18:27:00.000+05:30

Valve’s new Steam Mobile service is probably one of the best apps that I use with my Android, even though it’s only a few months old. There could be some improvements made, but Valve is already working on that.

Gamasutra talked to Kutta Srinivasan, a Valve engineer, about the app and where it is going. It’s most fascinating to see how the process of building the app first came about. There were already Steam apps on Android and iOS, but they were very limited in what they could do. They didn’t have access to the entirety of Steam, but Valve does and they used that to their advantage.

If you’ve used the app yet, you know that it looks amazingly like the PC counterpart with some mobile flair. Keeping the look and feel of Steam on the PC was an important goal for the team according to Srinivasan. That’s a good thing as the other Steam apps on mobile platforms aren’t very aesthetically pleasing.

Valve is going to keep on building the app and make it more like its PC counterpart. At least for now, the changes coming are “better screenshot support and the ability to view your game library.” This is fantastic news for me as I love looking at the screenshots my friends take in-game.

An interesting point to note is that chat is the most used feature of Steam mobile. The only problem they need to fix in regards to that is when you’re logged in to Steam on your PC and mobile device. Getting notifications on both can get pretty annoying after a while.

What do you think about Steam Mobile? Is it everything you’ve ever wanted? Or can Valve improve some features besides those listed? Let us know in the comments.

View the original article here

Reddit Is Fun App Banned From Google Play

2012-05-28T10:30:00.000+05:30

When it comes to apps in either the Android Market Google Play store or Apple’s Appstore, developers have always walked a fine line when it comes to products that contain sexual content. Apps that contain porn or other explicit materials have been routinely banned from Apple’s Appstore and (to a lesser degree) the Android Market.

Now, an app that many would say truly embodies the phrase “walking a fine line” has been banned from Google Play. Developer Andrew Shu took to reddit and then Google+ to express his shock that his app, Reddit is Fun, was removed from the store:

Wow. I wasn’t expecting this. I got 2 emails from the Google Play Store telling me my apps, reddit is fun lite and pro, have been banned for sexually explicit material.
I’m not sure how to go about appealing this. After all it’s true that reddit content includes NSFW content. Not sure exactly why my app was singled out and the other reddit apps weren’t, though.
Any thoughts? Should I even bother appealing? As always I appreciate your input, /r/android. Thanks.
EDIT: I posted on Google Plus: https://plus.google.com/108576990588738594191/posts/8LfJmKX48R2 maybe it would help to gain awareness through that avenue? Thanks for all your support, guys.

There are a lot of questions that immediately come to mind here. First, the one Shu pointed out himself. Why was his app singled out? BaconReader and redditmag are still there, for instance.

One reddit commenter seems to think that it’s simply an issue of some NSFW subreddits now being listed as default with the new version of the app:

I think it’s because with the new build you have gonewild and the likes in the subreddit list. Perhaps ask if you can have a NSFW toggle in the settings or just exclude the main nsfw subreddits in the list. I dont think its a big deal cause obviously you aren’t going to include all subreddits anyway.

If so, that would probably be an easy fix. The other angle on this is why would a reddit app be banned in the first place, even for containing NSFW subreddits by default?

The Google Play Business and Program Policy clearly states that…

We don’t allow content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts, or sexually explicit material. We also don’t allow content that drives traffic to commercial pornography sites.
Google has a zero-tolerance policy against child pornography. If we become aware of content with child pornography, we will report it to the appropriate authorities and delete the Google Accounts of those involved with the distribution.

But as Android Police points out, the Google Play page for App Content ratings clearly includes a subset for “high-maturity” apps, which says:

Applications in this category may focus on or include frequent instances of sexual and suggestive content; graphic violence; social features; simulated gambling; and strong alcohol, tobacco and drug references. Applications may collect user location data for the purpose of sharing or publishing with the user’s consent.

Plus, reddit walks that fine line, but at its core it is simply a place to find NSFW content. So is an browser, or app that functions as a search engine. It’s not like reddit apps are the only ones that you can use to find pornographic content.

View the original article here

Samsung Clarifies U.S. Release Date For Ice Cream Sandwich

2012-05-28T02:43:00.000+05:30

This morning we reported that Samsung had announced that it was beginning to roll out upgrades to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich to customers with the Galaxy S II smartphone.

Samsung announced that the update would be available in Korea and several European countries today. A release in the UK is scheduled for March 19th, pending carrier testing and approval. There was no information in the announcement about the release of Ice Cream Sandwich on Galaxy S II phones in the US.

As part of this morning’s story, a request for more information was sent to Samsung. They had not replied by the time the story ran, however a Samsung representative sent the following statement just a few minutes ago:

Samsung is in close communication with both Google and our carrier partners to upgrade eligible devices to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich as quickly and as smoothly as possible. Specific models that are upgradable to ICS will vary by market. Other specifics for the ICS upgrade in the U.S. have not been announced.

So there you have. It looks like US Samsung customers will have to wait a bit longer for the update. While it is undoubtedly in Samsung’s best interest to get Ice Cream Sandwich to its devices in the US market as quickly as possible, there doesn’t seem to be any timeline for doing so.

View the original article here

Crave giveaway: Wahoo Run/Gym Pack for iPhone

2012-05-27T18:25:00.000+05:30

Crave giveaway: Wahoo Run/Gym Pack for iPhone | Crave - CNET CNET Home Reviews Cell Phones Camcorders Digital Cameras Laptops TVs Car Tech Forums Appliances Cell Phone Accessories Components Desktops E-book Readers Games and Gear GPS Hard Drives & Storage Headphones Home Audio Home Video Internet Access Monitors MP3 Players Networking and Wi-Fi Peripherals Printers Software Tablets Web Hosting You are here: News Latest News Mobile Startups Cutting Edge Media Security Business Tech Health Tech Crave Apple Microsoft Politics & Law Gaming & Culture Blogs Video Photos RSS Download Windows Software Mac Software Mobile Apps Web Apps The Download Blog CNET TV Products Tech Shows How To Most Popular New Releases How To Computers Home Theater Smartphones Tablets Web Marketplace Today's Deals Exclusive Deals Coupon Codes Marketplace Blog Log In | Join Log In Join CNET Sign in with My profile Log out

CNET News Crave Crave giveaway: Wahoo Run/Gym Pack for iPhone Get your heart rate pumping with this week's Crave giveaway, the Wahoo Run/Gym Pack for the iPhone.

by Bonnie Cha March 23, 2012 12:01 AM PDT Follow @bonnieCNET (Credit:Wahoo Fitness)

Did you make a New Year's resolution to work out more? How's that going for you? Well, if you need a little help or extra motivation, then you'll love this week's giveaway.

Up for grabs is the Wahoo Run/Gym Pack for the iPhone. The fitness bundle includes a soft heart-rate monitor and a wireless Wahoo Key. The latter attaches to youriPhone via the 30-pin connector and wirelessly communicates with the monitor to read and record your heart rate.

The dongle features an ANT+ receiver, so it can work with other ANT+ fitness devices, such as a bike sensor, and is compatible with the iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S andiPad. Wahoo also offers a number of downloadable apps that you can use with the pack to track your workouts, calculate calories burned, and more.

Normally, the Wahoo Run/Gym Pack for the iPhone would run you $119.99, but you can get it for free. How? Well, there are a few rules, so please read carefully.

Register as a CNET user. Go to the top of this page and hit the Join CNET link to start the registration process. If you're already registered, there's no need to register again.Leave a comment below. You can leave whatever comment you want. If it's funny or insightful, it won't help you win, but we're trying to have fun here, so anything entertaining is appreciated.Leave only one comment. You may enter for this specific giveaway only once. If you enter more than one comment, you will be automatically disqualified.The winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) Wahoo Run/Gym Pack for iPhone with a retail value of $119.99. If you are chosen, you will be notified via e-mail. The winner must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.Entries can be submitted until Monday, March 26, at 12 p.m. ET.

And here's the disclaimer that our legal department said we had to include (sorry for the caps, but rules are rules):

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A PURCHASE WILL NOT INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF WINNING. YOU HAVE NOT YET WON. MUST BE LEGAL RESIDENT OF ONE OF THE 50 UNITED STATES OR D.C., 18 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER AT DATE OF ENTRY INTO SWEEPSTAKES. VOID IN PUERTO RICO, ALL U.S. TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS AND WHERE PROHIBITED BY LAW. Sweepstakes ends at 12 p.m. ET on Monday, March 26, 2012. See official rules for details.

Good luck.

Bonnie Cha Bonnie Cha is chief correspondent for Crave, covering every kind of tech toy imaginable (with a special obsession for robots and Star Wars-related stuff). When she's not scoping out stories, you can find her checking out live music or surfing in the chilly waters of Northern California.

Follow @bonnieCNET Topics: iPhone, Health tech Tags: crave giveaway

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About Crave

The name says it all. Crave is our blog about gorgeous gadgets and other crushworthy stuff. If you would like to contact Crave with a tip or comment, please write to: crave@cnet.com

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15 Unique and Innovative Single Page Website Designs

2012-04-18T17:28:00.000+05:30

One of the greatest challenges for designers, or any type of creative role, is working with limitations. It’s easy to throw a stream of ideas or styles into a single project, but giving yourself restrictions will allow you to truly flex your talents as a designer. A particularly intriguing example of this in terms of web design can be found in sites that host the entirety of their content on a single page.

The aesthetics of single page site design echo the limited nature of print, and while it’s certainly not a new concept, there’s been a growing trend, of late, in sites opting for this type of design. Aside from interactive Flash sites, or portfolio sites, this is becoming a popular option for organizations in the non-profit space, as well as for consumer and business facing companies. Here’s a showcase of 15 sites that use unique methods of hosting content on one page.

Farmhouse Fare

This catering company has a great single page design that could make anyone’s mouth water. The page slides from side to side as you navigate through the various sections of the site. One of the coolest parts is that the design is persistent panorama style design with high quality photos of the food they provide.

Dangers of Fracking

This website called dangers of fracking aims to educate visitors about all of the environmental, safety, and health hazards associated with the hydraulic fracking process. The single page design takes the viewer through an infographic that describes the entire process along with the math and science to explain how it works.

Free Range Designs

This online and offline designer created a single page website that has a refreshingly welcoming feel that reflects the down-to-earth copywriting style of the content. The entire site has conveniently located navigations making it as functional as a multi-page website with the beauty of a single page design.

Nike Flyover

Nike are making use of the latest html techniques in the promo of their 2012 Air Jordan. The effects are outstanding and scrolling down gives you the impression of flying shoes all over the screen.

Big Apple Hotdogs

New York hot dogshave a reputation for being some of the best in the world. This website helps convey that image with a very functional single page website that has a great design. It has all of the essentials; locations (and an interactive map), menu, and prices. The cartoon graphic hot dog character is easy to remember and adds a level of humor to the site.

SoleilNoir Believe In

SoleilNoir has an original way of presenting their positive message for 2012. The scrolling effect combined with the colors of each slide, can really change your mood in a positive way.

The Paxton

The Paxton is a local pub located in London with a website that blends the single page design with enticing high quality pictures of the restaurant’s food and atmosphere.

Fabmedia Studios

This is another web design firm that uses a unique and creative single page website style. The page shows examples of work along with some content to describe what separates Fabmedia’s websites from others.

Grupo CCR

This website is truly innovating the one page websites. The combination between scrolling and pictures, carefully chosen in relation with the business, is building an unique experience for users. Just try to scroll and you`ll be amazed of how cool it is!

Make Your Mark

This single page site is designed like a skyscraper with an elevator on the outside. The elevator contains the navigation and scrolls as you move up and down the page providing you with instant access to whatever kind of content you are searching for.

FiveThirtyBrew

FiveThirtyBrew are presenting their brewing process in a very original way, by using a series of graphics and steps which combined with the scrolling effect, can result into a real educational experience.

Dollar Dreadful

As a company that writes short stories, it is fitting that their website is designed like an old fashioned newspaper or newsletter. The design captures an antique feel providing a sense of mystery and stories of times that came before.

We Shoot Bottles

Not only does this domain name describe exactly what the company does (though it may be hard to understand if you are thinking of ‘shoot’ like a gun), the website also has a great design that displays the quality photography of their ‘bottle shoots’.

Search Inside Video

For many highly targeted niche businesses, there may only be one core service that is offered. This video optimization service is just that and uses a compelling one page design to deliver the “elevator pitch” about what they do.

Mezcal Buen Viaje

Mezcal can certainly be considered having a custom design…everything is original, from the bottle to the big scrolling bar, so navigating through the website souldn`t be a problem at all.

The Internet and web design have left the ‘first movers’ phase and are entering into mass adoption. In a noisy marketplace, how will you compete for make your site design stand out?

Best Premium WordPress Themes of March 2012

2012-04-01T17:22:00.001+05:30

Building a website on WordPress has become so easily, thanks to the developers who`re overstepping the bounds each day. After all, is PHP programming, the most popular language for web development. Besides this things, the biggest impact over a website is made by the design, and it must be outstanding to create the right impression. A wordpress theme can have them both: amazing design combined with powerful functionality. The result? A versatile website which can fit for any type of business!

These themes do exists, you know! And you can have the desired website, built on such themes, with minimum effort. Each month are released awesome themes and I`m happy to present you the best, powerful and versatile wordpress themes of March, full of features, which will help you build easier the right image of your business!

Grand College

Grand College is the best theme for School, University, College or even your business. It was designed for clean and modern websites. You can change almost every elements color easily via admin panel.

Radius

Featuring a responsive design, you can scale Radius all the way down to iPhone size and still have a beautiful, full-featured site in the palm of your hand. Radius has built-in swipe support for your portfolio images, videos and more! That means your entire portfolio is now fully sortable, scalable AND swipe-able.

Office

Office is the ultimate WordPress theme for any corporate business. Featuring a very professional design, 7 custom post types, drag and drop homepage modules, unlimited highlight color option, optional navigation icons, 3 menu regions, an optional responsive layout…Office has everything you’ll want for your business website.

Elogix

ELOGIX is an incredibly powerful & ultra responsive WordPress Theme that perfectly suits your Portfolio, Creative, Blog or Business Website.
This Theme has a fully responsive layout. That means it will fit your large desktop screen, all the way down to your iPhone – and of course any Tablet or iPad in between.

The Daily Press

The Daily Press is a super simple publication theme for WordPress. This site was designed and built for businesses wanting a similar presence on the web as the New York Times and other prestigious news organizations.

Gleam

Gleam was built to dazzle. With its flashy effects and smooth ajax loading techniques, this theme creates a truly unique experience that is sure to grab your visitor’s attention. Allowing for custom full BG photos for each page, Gleam makes it easy to create a custom stunning appearance for each section of your website. The theme also comes with a full-screen portfolio section, giving you a new way to display your work.

Sentence

Sentence is a responsive Blog and Portfolio Theme (try resizing your browser), suited for users who want to run a professional or personal blog and in addition to that want to showcase their work on a neat portfolio site.

Imperio

Imperio 1418 is a beautiful, modern wordpress theme. Imperio is the perfect theme for creative agencies, freelancers and business’s that want a modern look. The beautiful textured look was carefully handcrafted to give it a unique look across the entire site.

Sheeva

Sheeva is a very powerful theme with a clean, corporate and responsive layout. This theme is really suitable for users with no programming background, so you can set any color to elements such as backgrounds, links, text, menu links, etc. and completely change the look and feel of your site in few seconds.

Aspiration

Aspiration is nice and clean product presentation WordPress theme. 6 different page variants allow theme to be used for corporate websites, blog, portfolio, product presentation, services – any website where you would like to create presentation of your products or services.

Flare

Flare is a Responsive WordPress Theme with Unlimited colors made for your Business/Corporate website, Portfolio, or Blog. It’s flexible, you can customize it with the powerful admin panel, which gives total control over many major aspects of your website.

Notes

It allows you to use WordPress to post various post formats such as image, video, gallery, audio, quote, etc. like Tumblr blog. The theme design is inspired by the iPhone Notes app. It is a modern design theme with personal touches (light textured background and a bookmark ribbon).

Chapter One

Chapter One is a theme built with the common business/corporate website’s structure. It can be used to present your company services and products… and also as a blog platform. It’s clean and simple, but also elegant, sophisticated and pixel-perfect-designed!

Linguini

Linguini is a theme perfect fit for the restaurants, pubs, bars, wineries and other companies offering foods and drinks. Linguini theme offers an excellent system for administration menu cards (food menu, drink menu) and photogalleries. The theme is highly optimized for search engines and has excellent SEO options like adding your own keywords and meta descriptions for each page, post or menu item.

Project 9 is a responsive, creative and bold, multi-dimensional WordPress theme. It blends two aesthetics – creative and professional – using a easily viewed layout with a creative masonry/tumblog for a blog layout. Project 9 is great for business professionals or creatives looking for a way to lay out their work and display it in a classy, yet responsive format.

Bounce

Bounce is a powerful, professional and fully responsive WordPress theme, meaning that it will fit on all devices. It has an extensive admin panel, degrades gracefully if javascript is disabled and is compatible with all major browsers.

Zenden

Zenden is a powerful business corporate portfolio theme fully compatible with WordPress 3.3. It is suitable for users with zero programming skills as well as advanced developers. Zenden is the perfect match for your business with predefined styles, theme integrated shortcodes and widgets, multilingual support and flexible and awesome sliders.

Game Portal

Game Portal is a powerful WordPress Theme with standout design and multipurpose functionality. This theme supports BuddyPress which gives you an amazing chance to build your own social network community within your website easily.
Turn your website into interactive place for fans and visitors via multiple user groups, discussion forums, activity steams, friend connections, private communications and your favorite blogging features.

Rawa

Rawa is a clean, minimal and responsive HTML5 / CSS3 template. It looks fantastic on mobile devices such as iPhones/Smarphones or Tablet-Pc’s. This is the perfect way to show your works/posts.

Horizon

Horizon uses a great deal of white space, combined with a light background to create an clean feel to this site. The elements of this web design are nicely spaced out, combined with an unlimited color-palette to create a clean overall design.

Semki

Semki is the perfect flexible theme for Personal, Business, Corporate, Portfolio and Blog built with latest WordPress features. Post formats, unlimited colors, simple to use admin panel, easy to setup and customise and so on.

Evolet

Powerful WordPress theme designed in a clean and minimalistic style. This Theme is very flexible, easy for customizing and well documented, approaches for personal and professional use. Based on 960 grid system with 24 columns.

Food Recipes

Food Recipes is a beautifully designed WordPress theme for food related web sites and businesses.

Precision vCard

Precision is a sleek and minimalist single page WordPress theme with smooth scrolling design and amazing effects!
It has a unique “brochure style” design with a fixed left hand side so your image slide-show is always visible. The home page is built inside a content slider (supports anything) this can slide, fade or be a static page.

Examination

Examination is fully loaded Corporate and Portfolio WordPress theme which is extremely universal, powerful and easy to use. 3D slider and very fantastic anything slider with custom built modifications can in first moment touch your customers.

Century

Century is a theme of the century so if you’re designer, photographer, DJ, artist, blogger, cool guy, if love eyecandy things, simplicity, life, you gonna love this!

Raiden

Raiden is the WordPress premium theme with powerful admin panel. You can use it for business, corporate, product catalogue or portfolio web sites. Whether your a wordpress pro or just a beginner, you’ll have absolutely no problems at all working with this theme.

Quickr

«Quickr» is a WordPress Premium Responsive HTML5 / CSS3 which uses the best practices of latest technologies and is compatible with all mobile devices. Quickr is suitable for wide range of websites, from personal blogs to small business and corporate websites. 6 Sliders (2 of which -responsive), Audio/Video posts, pricing tables and numerous jquery enhancements are just a small part of what the template offers.

Respond

Respond is An adaptive Premium WordPress Theme with striking appearance and functionality.he pages look stunning regardless to your platform and adapt to screen sizes accordingly. With modern styling and functionality thanks to a splash of CSS3 effects, rollovers and transitions your website will be a joy to use.

Metric

Metric is a Powerful WordPress theme designed in a clean and minimalistic style. This Theme is easy to use, flexible layouts though shortcodes and template options, approaches for personal and professional use. Based on 960 grid system with 24 columns.

Mercato

Mercato is an elegant and flexible WordPress Premium E-Commerce Theme, suited for users with no coding knowledge as well as developers.
The theme comes with a tons of options so you can modify layout, styling and fonts directly from within the backend. Multiple Slideshows, font and skins options as well as dynamic template builder will help you create the Website you need in no time.

FacePress

FacePress represents a community-builder theme with multiple skins and layouts suitable for different needs. Let your registered users upload posts directly from front-end. The front-end submission permits users to choose their post format: image, video, audio, text and attachment. Each and every single format can be enabled or disabled.

Radial

Radial is a Blog and Portfolio WordPress Theme, suited for users who want to run a professional or personal blog and wants to showcase your products, services or news in a creative manner.
This WordPress Theme comes with a plethora of options so you can modify layout, styling, colors and fonts directly from within the backend.

Stilo

Stilo is a full-fledged Responsive Portfolio / Gallery Theme, built to showcase your beautiful works with a certain pizazz. It’s an easy to use theme with loads of nifty features.

Wisdom of Life

WISDOM of Life, it’s a clean and elegant theme, developed mainly to setup NGOs, non-profit orgnizations and corporate websites. Using the color scheme of your choice by using color picker make it elegant and high visual impact experience. This theme is best suitable for a small to large NGO Organizations to setup reference website. Theme works in all the major browsers, and has massive features to use for your next projects as well.

Sprout

Sprout is a feature packed theme for the web magazine or personal blog. Easily change the look and feel of your site w/ 10 unique styles, a custom header, and unlimited color options.

Mini Folio

MiniFolio is modern theme created to be easy to modify and customize. Silence can be used by photographers, portfolio, companies, private blogs and more. You can easily customize this theme with easy to use admin panel.

Real Estate

WP Pro Real Estate 3 is one of the most powerful real estate themes purpose built to showcase your listings, loaded with more features than you can shake a stick at!
It can be used for anything from real estate to vacation rentals to automotive sales.

RT-Theme 16

RT-Theme 16 is a premium WordPress theme with powerful CMS tools admin panel. You can use it for business, corporate, product catalogue, services or portfolio web sites. The product and portfolio tools also give you wide opportunities to use in various services as tour itineraries, rent a car, real estate or hotel room presentations.

Website

Website is a responsive theme, which means it adapts to the device on which it’s displayed.
The theme cares for your content so it looks great on all devices, but you can also decide to show part of a content on some versions only, and hide on others.

Cooking Press

CookingPress is a WordPress theme for foodies. This recipe theme will let you share all your recipes and cooking tips with wide audience. It’s one of the first WordPress recipe themes with support for Google Recipe View. What does it mean? it means that your blog will be understand not only by people, but also by search engines.

Coffee Lounge

This is a perfect theme for anyone that owns a coffee, bar or bistro and wants he’s/she’s website to make an amazing impression on the visitors. Or better yet, leave them drooling over the offers.The theme comes packed with a cool homepage slider that lets you showcase your coffees, cocktails or cakes in a way that brings forward what’s the most important, your products.

Styx

Styx is the Reponsive WordPress theme for Business, Corporate, Software, Portfolio and Blog built with latest WordPress features. Custom Post Type, Customizing Elements Colors, Extensive admin panel.

Wp Avatar

WP Avatar is a flexible and a powerful Internationalized wordpress theme with full support for Language Localization. This SEO friendly theme is layed out based on 960 grid system and it empowers you to choose from unlimited options to design and publish your website.

Activity

This theme is built for business world, graphic designers, photographers, video producers, illustrators, artists and other creative freelance pros who want a simple, elegant and effective way to showcase projects, share testimonials, promote services and even do a little blogging on the side. It is designed to immediately show the visitor the two most important things: your name and your work. The theme is also made to be easy to setup and manage using WordPress.

SXSW: Google TV Developer Talks With LG, MOVL & Clear Channel

2012-03-21T19:16:00.000+05:30

Developers are bringing some impressive apps to Google TV

The Google TV is a pretty impressive piece of equipment. It’s poised to be a major game changer for the television space. Google recently talked with people in the TV tech industry to ask them questions about Google TV.

The panel of developers include Pete Hollenhorst of LG, Alan Queen of MOVL, and Harper Lieblich of Clear Channel. The developers talk about why they have decided to support Google TV with their various technologies.

The talks were conducted over a Google+ hangout. If you missed it, Google developers have posted the entire 27 minute conversation on their YouTube channel. Check it out to see the new developments coming to Google TV.

Ads On Free Apps Are Killing Your Smartphone Battery

2012-03-20T20:07:00.000+05:30

Those freebies spend more energy showing you ads than actually running the app itself.

Everybody knows that playing games on your smartphone is a death sentence to your phone’s battery. When I first succumbed to my light addiction to Words With Friends, I actually had to start taking my battery charger to work with me because my iPhone wasn’t making it through a whole eight-hour shift (although actually working at work would probably have also preserved my battery, too, but that’s neither here nor there).

If you’re like me, you assumed that the battery-suckage was due to the power required to actually run the game. While your phone’s battery does diminish when you play the game (of course using your phone will use up your battery), it’s not running the game that’s killing it – it’s the fact that you’re using free apps.

As you know, or at least have noticed, free apps are always accompanied by the display of ads. The ads are, after all, how the apps pay for themselves and why you’re permitted to download and enjoy it for free in the first place. However, a new study by a research team at Purdue University has found that the energy used to produce those ads can account for as much as three-fourths of the total energy used to run the apps.

If you are curious enough to check out the research paper, one question that will likely arise before you even get out of the first paragraph of the abstract is: why didn’t the researchers include iPhones in the study? It wasn’t an oversight by any means on the researchers behalf but, rather, Apple’s infamous garden wall.

Abhinav Pathak, the lead researcher for the study, took a minute to reply to an email I sent him in which I asked about, among other things, the omission of iOS devices from the study. “The theoretical framework behind EProf [EProf was the diagnostic tool developed by Pathak and his team for the purpose of this study so they could assess the energy consumption of apps] is Operating System independent and we have implemented the tool for 2 OSes (Android and Windows Mobile 6.5) to show that it actually works across OSes,” he said. “However building the tool requires OS level changes to perform event logging. We do not have access to iOS to implement our lower level changes. Hence we did not port EProf to iOS and hence no app energy measurements from iPhone.”

One app that got a lot of attention from the researchers, and one I’m sure you’ve noticed puts an absolute beating on your battery, was Angry Birds. It’s almost impossible to get more than a couple of hours of untethered playtime before you have to leash yourself to a power outlet to continue to feed your need to play. As it turns out, only 20% of the energy used to power the appis used on actually running the game. 45% of the energy used is on your phone’s GPS and locating you in order to deliver locale-specific ads over your 3G connection.

The study opens up a promising exploration into smartphone energy consumption and, hopefully, developing ways in which that energy can be conserved as newer apps are developed. If you think about it, it makes total sense that there should be some sort of energy regulation on battery usage within smartphones, especially since so many of us have interwoven the device into our daily lives. Pathak believes that the energy drain from app-producing free apps can be cut by developers through some clever programming.

“So far, app developers did not have any tool which could give them in-depth energy consumption details about their app and hence were completely oblivious to the energy drain inside the app,” Pathak said. Now that the researcher’s energy analysis tool EProf has shown that these apps are draining the battery, Pathak added, developers should now be able to address the problem with excessive battery drainage due to ads generated by free apps.

Pathak also mentioned that there is a forthcoming paper that hopes to address the solutions of some of the “most notorious app energy bugs.”

In the meantime, it might be in your best interest to pay for the full version of Angry Birds Space later this month so you’re not constantly hugging a wall outlet just to destroy some green pig forts.

From WebProNews

Ads On Free Apps Are Killing Your Smartphone Battery

2012-03-20T19:20:00.001+05:30

One app that got a lot of attention from the researchers, and one I’m sure you’ve noticed puts an absolute beating on your battery, was Angry Birds. It’s almost impossible to get more than a couple of hours of untethered playtime before you have to leash yourself to a power outlet to continue to feed your need to play. As it turns out, only 20% of the energy used to power the app is used on actually running the game. 45% of the energy used is on your phone’s GPS and locating you in order to deliver locale-specific ads over your 3G connection.

Pathak also mentioned that there is a forthcoming paper that hopes to address the solutions of some of the “most notorious app energy bugs.”

View the original article here

Apple Sells Three Million iPads In Four Days

2012-03-20T19:07:00.000+05:30

"Blockbuster" new iPad sees best first weekend in the iPad's history.

Just a little while ago we brought you news that both AT&T and Apple had announced “record” sales of the new iPad, which hit stores last Friday. Neither company, however, had gotten into specifics about how many iPads had been sold in the new tablet’s opening weekend, leaving us to speculate about just what “record” meant.

Now Apple has gone into specifics. The company announced today that they had sold 3 million iPads in the first four days of availability. Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing called this “the strongest iPad launch yet.” The new iPad became available in both in Apple Stores and the stores of Apple’s retail partners in nine countries around the world. It was the largest single-day launch in Apple’s history.

Apple announced the new iPad at a special media event on March 7th. Preorders of the tablet sold out in the first two days, and online orders are currently taking 2-3 weeks to ship. Apple’s retail stores had a sizable supply of the tablets in stock.

The new iPad’s launch contrasted with last year’s iPad 2 launch. The iPad 2 suffered from shortages, and took nearly a month to sell its first million units.

From WebProNews

Internet firm in China stops using Google services

2012-03-07T00:15:00.002+05:30

Image via CrunchBase

HONG KONG

An Internet company run by one of Asia's richest men said Tuesday it has ended its affiliation with Google Inc. as the American search giant stopped censoring the Internet in violation of Chinese regulations.

Making good on threats made more than two months ago, Google began shifting its Chinese-based search functions to Hong Kong, a Chinese territory where companies are not legally required to censor Internet search results.

TOM Online, a mainland Chinese Internet firm controlled by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing, said Tuesday it was stopping use of Google's search services after "the expiry of agreement."

"TOM reiterated that as a Chinese company, we adhere to rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses," the company's parent, Hong Kong-based TOM Group, said in a statement Tuesday.

TOM Online, which runs online and mobile Internet services in mainland China, did not say when it stopped using Google or provide any details of its agreement with the company.

TOM likely used Google's search box feature, allowing visitors to its Web site to search the Internet with the U.S. company's technology.

It's still unclear whether other Chinese companies that partner with Google will follow suit. Representatives for heavyweight Internet portal operator Sina Corp. did not answer calls seeking comment Tuesday.

Companies, however, are liable to think twice about maintaining a partnership with a company that has been condemned by Beijing for running afoul of its censorship rules. From a business perspective, there are also uncertainties and risks for mainland Internet users relying on a Hong Kong service that could end up blocked.

China Mobile, the world's largest phone company by subscribers, with more than 500 million accounts, could find its partnership with Google for mobile search services in danger, analysts at brokerage CLSA said in a recent report.

"Some of the Chinese companies may want to play it safe and look at other options," said Elinor Leung, CLSA's head of Asia Internet and telecommunications research in Hong Kong.

Google's action did not translate into unfiltered results for millions of Chinese, but shifted responsibility for restricting content to the central government and its formidable Web filters.

Hong Kong, a former British colony with a separate government and civil liberties denied mainland Chinese, maintains open Internet policies.

The territory's government "does not censor the content of Web sites hosted in Hong Kong" and "places no restrictions on access to Hong Kong based Web sites from anywhere in the world," the government said in a statement.

------

AP researcher Bonnie Cao in Beijing contributed to this report.

from http://www.businessweek.com

Search engine takes leap in Web tech Search engine takes leap in Web tech

2012-03-05T00:13:00.001+05:30

Image via CrunchBase

LONDON: Global internet services company Yahoo has announced that it will adopt some of the key standards of the "semantic web" to improve its search engine.

The technology, considered to be the next step for the World Wide Web, involves a much richer understanding of the masses of data placed online. Amit Kumar, director of product management for the company's search site, has revealed in Yahoo's blog that they will include some semantic web identifiers while indexing the web for Yahoo search.

Currently, most search engines, especially Google, use the interconnections between sites to identify relevance for a particular topic. Since the semantic web helps to capture the meaning of data on a page, it can enable a user searching the web to work out its relevance to a particular topic.

It promises to change this because it helps to capture the meaning of data on a page and so give machines the capability to work out its relevance to a particular topic.

11 Blogging Lessons From The Daily Mail Traffic Growth

2012-03-04T00:10:00.001+05:30

Daily Mail Bin Campaign (Day 169) (Photo credit: adamwilcox)

The Daily Mail is the most popular newspaper online. The website of the British newspaper even beats the New York Times website traffic.

Let’s take a look at the key ingredients for the success of The Daily Mail and what lessons bloggers can learn:

Publish news that people want to read. People love celebrities, people care about themselves. You will see a lot of content featuring celebrities and different health concerns.

Focus on good stories, particularly human stories. Majority of Daily Mail stories is focused on people. Celebrities and non-celebrities in a wide range of different life experiences. Everyone can find something to relate to.

Go global. Despite Daily Mail being a British newspaper, their website targets global audience. Thinking of domestic audiences and limiting your own blog on the Internet will not get you far in terms of traffic.

Keep the design simple. Your visitors should not have to spend a lot of time working out how your site works. Keep it simple, Stupid!

Create clickable headlines. Daily Mail articles feature pretty long headlines packed with celebrity names and other attractive keywords.

Use pictures. Use large pictures. Use lots of pictures. Many of the Daily Mail posts have only a few lines of text but include several large pictures.

Caption the pictures. Daily Mail captions their pictures in funny and interesting ways. It’s kind of like writing an interesting headline for each of the pictures.

Don’t just report on the news, spin it. You most probably cannot break the news but you can go deep into the news, find unique angles, spin it and make it interesting to read.

More than 10 posts on the front page. This could boost search engine rankings but also make your visitors stick to the page longer as there is a bigger chance they will find something they like.

More than top 10 most popular posts. They also feature many more posts in the sidebar than an average blog does. Again this means there is a bigger chance a visitor might find something she likes.

Popular posts with pictures. Even in the sidebar Daily Mail uses a lot of pictures when showing their popular posts. They incentivise the reader to click with an image and few words about the story.

The Daily Mail content strategy focuses on entertaining and engaging content that people want to read. It features easy-to-scan and easy-to-read copy with lots of attractive pictures.

Definitely some food for thought for bloggers. Please do share this post if you found it insightful.

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