When Google announced they were coming to Austin, AT&T announced they would be offering 1GB internet just like Google. Just like the younger sibling who says “that’s not fair!” – AT&T hasn’t done the research or groundwork for laying 1GB fiber. They haven’t been working with the city for the last year or two on building the infrastructure needed using the newest fiber cables like Google has. AT&T’s statement is a complete bluff.

And unless you’re a cable company executive, you’ll be ecstatic when fiber hits your town too. All ISPs will now have competitive speeds and lower pricing. Its already happening in Kansas City. Google has the balls to stand up to the ISP oligarchy and put them in their place. Give them a helping hand when they arrive in your city. [Via]

This story, When will Google Fiber Take Over the World ?, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

While the HP Envy TouchSmart 14 Sleekbook is fitted with a 14 inch screen that sports a massive 3200 x 1800 pixel resolution, and is also available in lower resolution models as well in case your budget doesn’t stretch that far, including 1366 x 768 pixel and 1600 x 900, with prices starting at $699.

The HP Pavilion TouchSmart 14 Sleekbook can be fitted with a range of Intel processor options with prices starting from around$480

“This is a new touch-optimized Sleekbook with AMD discrete graphics and up to 2GB of memory on select models. A full selection of ports including HDMI and USB and up to 1TB of hard drive storage and premium DTS Sound+ audio. A PC great for entertainment.”

The HP Pavilion TouchSmart 14 Sleekbook will be launching in the US on June 5th 2013, starting from $480

Source: The Verge : Liliputing : Windows Blog

This story, HP Launches Pavilion TouchSmart 14 Sleekbook, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

Here are five fantastic and completely free applications for Android-based mobile devices that you can use to help you pay your bills and keep track of your personal finances no matter where you are and from the palm of your hand.

Droid Wallet

While there are many more powerful financial applications available for keeping track of your money, DroidWallet is easily the best free one if you are not looking to spend any money. And it is quite an excellent and comprehensive app, considering that it is absolutely free. The inconvenient thing about DroidWallet is that you are not importing your financial information from some paid service that you are using, but instead, you are entering all of your financial information yourself. However, this is good because it makes the information very accurate, since you are checking everything and confirming all the information before entering it into the app.

DroidWallet enables users to manage their expenses and incomes separately so that they can see not only where money is going from, but also where it is going. It’s very easy to organize and categorize all of your financials and set up repeat transactions for reoccurring income or expenses. The app is also international, as it supports a variety of different currencies. Even though you cannot import your finances from other service, you can export them from DroidWallet as spreadsheets if you want to keep backups of your statements elsewhere.

Check

You might be familiar with Pageonce, which is what Check used to be called. It is an award-winning app that not only helps you to manage your bills, but pay them as well. It is an all-in-one solution that you can use to make sure that you never miss a payment. If you are someone who has a hard time keeping track of bills and paying them on time, you will love this app and even more so, love the fact that you can finally avoid paying late fees for good. As stated previously, the app not only stays on top of your bills by monitoring your bank accounts and credit cards, but it also allows you to pay these bills through your bank account or credit card right from the app.

It is also good for tax preparation, because it keeps a centralized list of bills and financial information that you will have available to you at all times. Check will also help you stay out of the red by giving you alerts when your account’s funds are low or you are reaching your credit limits.

Manilla

Manilla is probably the best purely organizational money app that is completely free. It is another very comprehensive application that will give you a clear overview of all your accounts and bills, as well as give you alerts and reminders to keep you from missing deadlines or spending over your credit limits. No matter what bank you use or what company you need to pay, Manilla will be support it more than likely, since it supports thousands of leading providers.

You will never miss another payment with Manilla, because it sends you emails and text messages to remind you of upcoming payment deadlines. It’s also great for organizing and filing your financial data, because it gives you online storage capabilities for free. But most important, Manilla is probably the most secure free financial app available and is monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week for maximum privacy.

MobiKwik

This application is one of the best payment apps, because it can take care of many different payments that you need to make. Not only can you pay various bills using MobiKwik, but you can also pay for prepaid and postpaid mobile recharges via your mobile device. You can also use it to recharge DTH and data cards, but also pay all of your most necessary bills like your electricity, landline, gas and life insurance bills for example.

Doxo

Doxo acts like a virtual filing cabinet for keeping all of your finances and bills in check. If you are tired of keeping your bills in check physically, or you want a backup of them being saved in the cloud, this is for you. Doxo allow you to scan all of your financial documents and bills and save them online for free.

Users can securely store digital documents in the cloud using Doxo, view their files as PDFs and add details to distinguish the documents and take notes regarding your important bills or financial reports. You can also keep passwords, pin code details, policy numbers and any other important information stored in the app so you don’t have to carry around pieces of paper in your wallet that can easily get lost. Best of all, all users have unlimited storage space.

Related: 10 Best Free Smartphone Apps for Managing your Money

About Author: David Lazar is a blogger at CometDocs.com. With a background in journalism, he enjoys writing about and following a variety of topics, including gadgets, careers, education, technology and new media. 

This story, 5 Free Android Apps That Can Help You Pay Your Bills, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

The 2.5 miles of track use a total of 93,307 Lego pieces and took around 6 hours to build, it then took the train around 4 hours from the start to the finish of the worlds longest Lego railway track.

The man behind the world record attempt is adult LEGO fan Henrik Ludvigsen, who got the idea after noticing the large number of rails he had in his personal LEGO storage. With the help of advertisements in newspapers and on the internet he received blue LEGO rails from all over the world – enough to set the world record.

You can see more photos and find out more details about the worlds longest Lego railway over at Lego.

Source Gizmodo

This story, The World’s Longest Lego Railway – Stretches Nearly 2.5 Miles Long, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

The new move by PayPal brings them in closer competition with the likes of Groupon and Square, who themselves have been battling hard for the small business payments system market.

Related: 10 Best Apps to turn your Smartphone into a Credit Card Reader

The new trade in program offers POS systems from ERPLY, Leaf, Leapset and the company’s own PayPal Here. PayPal explains a little more:

“The way we shop is changing forever – and PayPal is driving the transformation. We’re here to help you grow your business with new technology that will transform the experience you give your customers. PayPal lets you take payments simply and securely no matter how or where you do business. And, most importantly, we help ensure you never miss a sales opportunity again.

The cash register has been a familiar sight for generations, but it’s time to replace it with a modern solution. PayPal is supporting that transformation by waiving transaction fees when you use PayPal Here to accept credit, debit card, check, and PayPal payments for the remainder of the year when your qualifying U.S. business stops using a dusty old cash register and chooses a modern end-to-end solution like PayPal Here (which is available for iPad and connects wirelessly to a cash drawer and a printer). We are also making this offer available for solutions pre-integrated with PayPal from our POS partners including ERPLY, Leaf, Leapset, NCR Silver, ShopKeep and Vend.”

Source: PayPal : Tech Crunch

This story, PayPal Opens A Trade-In Deal Program for Their Old Cash Registers, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

Back in March Google Announced that they had activated a total of 750 million Android devices, so that is another 150 million Android devices in the last two months, they should hit 1 billion Android activations some time in June or July.

As our developer audience knows, Android is more than simply a phone or tablet. It’s a platform, an ecosystem, and an opportunity for developers around the world to build exciting services and apps that reach millions of people every day. The flexibility and openness of Android provides developers–and Google, through services like Google Now–the opportunity to build simple, beautiful experiences across multiple devices.

900 million device activations certainly is impressive, Android seems to be becoming more popular and is now the most popular mobile OS.

Source Google+

This story, Google Android Reaches 900 Million Device Activations, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

Those are the main components. To build Rober’s rig you’ll also need a circular platform, a backdrop, and a couple of flashlights. Here’s what Rober’s rig looks like:

Basically, the ceiling fan-powered rig spins an object in the center at high speeds, but the plain backdrop spins along as well. This makes it appear that the background and subject are stationary while the camera is rotating around the subject!

Ordinary bullet time is done using tens of DSLRs and expensive rigs, but Rober managed to build his rig for roughly $30 (the price of his cheap fan). Here’s a video in which Rober introduces his rig and shows off some of the amazing sample footage he was able to capture using it:

All the sample clips in the video were captured using a GoPro Hero3 shooting at 240 frames per second. Rober used After Effects to smooth out some of the motion at certain parts. (via Mark Rober via Gizmodo)

This story, [DIY] How to Create a Matrix-style “Bullet Time” Effect, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

As all the leaks revealed already, the E-P5 is modeled after the old Olympus PEN F SLR from decades ago–50 years to be exact. Olympus is launching this latest PEN camera on the 50th anniversary of its legendary ancestor.

At the core of the camera are the same technologies found in the E-M5: the same 16-megapixel CMOS sensor (ISO range is 100-25600), autofocus system, 5-axis image stabilization system, and more.

The max shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second is a world’s first for compact system cameras. Olympus says the mechanical shutter’s speed will allow photographers to capture fast-moving subjects (e.g. flying insects) or to shoot with large apertures in bright environments (i.e. for shallow depth of field shots even during the day).

The camera is also speedy in startup time (0.5 seconds), has 9fps continuous shooting, and a shot-to-shot time of just 0.044 seconds.

To aid in manual focusing, the E-P5 features a new Focus Peaking system that helps you easily eyeball the focus plane of any scene, using white or black pixels as indicators for what’s in focus.

The interface of the camera features a new Dial Control system that offers some choice. A lever on the back of the camera determines what the dials on the front and back do. In the first position, the front and back dials control aperture and exposure time (respectively), and in the second case, they control ISO and white balance (respectively). You can also assign a number of other functions to further tweak the behavior to your liking.

On the back of the camera is a 3-inch 1.04-million-dot tilting touchscreen that can be faced upwards at 80 degrees or downwards at 50 degrees.

WiFi is making its first appearance in an Olympus camera with the E-P5. The connectivity can be used with Olympus smartphone app, called Olympus Image Share 2.0, to pair your camera with your smartphone. Once paired, you can use your phone as an external display, remote, or GPS unit for your camera.

Other features include a built-in collage maker called Photo Story, 1080/30p HD video recording, a time-lapse maker, and 12 Art Filters.

Here’s Olympus’ official video introduction to the E-P5:

The price tag will be $1000 for the body only, or $1450 if you’d like to buy the camera with a 17mm f/1.8 kit lens and a VF-4 electronic viewfinder. You can already begin preordering the camera through online retailers such as B&H Photo Video.

This story, Olympus PEN E-P5 :A Retro-Styled Mirrorless Camera with Powerful Specs, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

To submit your name head over to the “Going to Mars with MAVEN” submission page and register for a free account. Then you can fill out the form to get your name and poem, if selected, on the DVD. You also get a beautiful certificate of appreciation to document your involvement with the MAVEN mission, which you can print, frame and hang it over your desk.

Anybody who is over the age of 18 is eligible for participation. Messages must be written in English, and poems must be in the haiku form. Haiku is made of three lines; the first and last lines must have exactly five syllables each and the middle line must have exactly seven syllables.

You have until July 1 to make your submission. Public voting for the best haiku will commence from July 15 to July 29.

Related: 13 Interesting Websites for Space & Astronomy Lovers

The “Going to Mars with MAVEN” campaign is being managed by the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (CU/LASP). The mission is due to liftoff this November from the Florida Space Coast. MAVEN is the first spacecraft devoted to exploring and understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The spacecraft will investigate how the loss of Mars’ atmosphere to space determined the history of water on the surface.

The first time NASA asked people to submit their names for the Curiosity rover mission, nearly 1.2 million people signed up. Their names were written on pages that were scanned and reproduced at microscopic scale onto two chips the size of a dime. The chips now ride along with Curiosity as it continues to roam the surface of Mars.

NASA also has a tradition of spacecraft carrying personal mementos out of Earth. Since 1997, shuttle missions have carried elementary school students’ signatures as part of an outreach project called Student Signatures in Space. The Cassini spacecraft brought a disk of signatures into orbit around Saturn. The Phoenix Mars Lander took DVD to Mars’ north pole. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took a microchip to the moon. And the exoplanet-hunting Kepler telescope took a DVD full of names and messages to ET into orbit.

In 2010, NASA asked the public to submit their mug shots so they could be flown to the International Space Station in one of the last two remaining space shuttle flights. A year earlier, in 2009, a 70 meter antenna at Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex in Tidbinbilla sent out a burst of radio waves carrying personal messages from people to Gliese 581d, a planet outside our Solar System which may support life.

[via Universe Today]

This story, NASA Provides A Chance to Send Your Name to Mars, was originally published at Your Digital Space.

XnRetro is another desktop program dedicated to giving your pictures that old, spoiled look. XnRetro doesn’t try to mimic Instagram’s filters. Rather, they have their own set of filters and retro photo frames. In addition to Windows, Mac OSX and the Linux desktop, XnRetro is also available on the mobile platform. Users of iPhone and Android devices can install it from their respective app store.

In XnRetro, you can apply four kind of effects and these are grouped into four different tabs at the bottom of the program window.

• The Retro tab consist of filters that adds a retro effect to the pictures. There are 20 different retro filters.
• The Light tab has various forms of light leaks that typically plagued early camera models. There are 15 random light effects.
• The Vignette tab has various shapes of vignettes. There are 5 vignette shapes inclduing round, square and vertical.
• And finally, the Filter tab has many different frames. There are 30 frames available ranging from simple black borders, to polaroid styled frames to garish flowery ones. Almost all the frames have the vintage look.

You proceed from one tab to another choosing and applying a filter of your choice. If you don’t like the look, you can return back to any of the tabs to change the filter later.

Related: [How-to] Create Instagram-Like Photos Using your Camera and a Plastic Bag

On the right of the image preview, you will find various sliders that lets you make adjustment to the image independently of the filter that you have applied. However, when you make adjustments to exposure, saturation, and the balance of the 3 primary colors, and then apply a filter, the effect will be compounded, as these filters are nothing but color and brightness/contrast adjustment of the image. The advantage is that it gives you precise control over your image. If you do not like the way a filter looks, you can enhance or lower the effect of the filter by adjusting these sliders.

The last two sliders, Vignetting and Light opacity controls the amount of vignette and the strength of the light leak filters, respectively. There is also a Noise filter to add grains to the image. The “Square output” tick box at the top controls whether the image will be cropped to a square during framing.

When you are done, you can save your picture and optionally share it on a number of social networks like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, Tumblr or upload it to an image hosting website such as Imgur, Imageshack, Yfrog etc.

This story, XnRetro Adds Intagram-Like Vintage Camera Effects to Photos Easily, was originally published at Your Digital Space.