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Apple to distribute over $100 million worth of iPads in underprivileged schools

Students in 114 schools across the country are about to get free iPads straight from Apple, thanks to the tech titan’s $100 million pledge to President Obama’s ConnectED initiative . Cupertino first announced its support for the project (which aims to give students access to high-speed internet) in February this year, but now we know how the company’s fulfilling its multimillion-dollar promise. According to Apple’s ConnectED page, 96 percent of the students in each of its 114 chosen schools are eligible for free or, at least, reduced-priced lunches. Also, half of the schools are in urban areas, with students who are mostly of Black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian heritage. Apple placed emphasis in giving minorities access to technology and knowledge, as they usually don’t, putting them at a disadvantage. The company says it sees “the results of this and other forms of inequality every day”, as “minorities are significantly underrepresented in the technology industry.” In addition to giving every student in the school an iPad , Apple will also provide each teacher with both an iPad and a Mac and will equip classrooms with Apple TV. The company will be assigning special education teams to oversee each school, tailor curricula for the needs of every institution and work with providers to ensure students and teachers have WiFi or cellular connection, as well. You can check out Apple’s ConnectED page for more details, or the complete list of schools to know if there’s one in your area. [Image credit: Getty Images] Inspired by the students, teachers, and administrators at the 114 schools we’re partnering with for ConnectED http://t.co/WTsQT0yAD4 – Tim Cook (@tim_cook) October 27, 2014 Filed under: Desktops , Tablets , Apple Comments Source: Apple

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Apple to distribute over $100 million worth of iPads in underprivileged schools

Tesla Model S is now cheaper to lease, comes with a return policy

Tesla has just revealed reduced lease rates for its Model S, along with a “happiness guarantee” that lets you return the EV up to three months after purchase with no penalty. Elon Musk said that buyers in certain states will get rates up to 25 percent lower, thanks to a new deal it struck with US Bank. Leasing currently starts at around $800 per month for a Model S. The return guarantee is “no questions asked, ” but Musk added that it’s not possible to then turn around and lease a newer model unless you pay a pass-through fee. Tesla recently announced a new, more powerful “D” variant of the Model S and, and currently has the Model X SUV and cheaper Model 3 in development. The new lease rates and guarantee have led some to speculate that sales are down, but Tesla told the NYT that “demand remains extremely strong for the cars.” Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Autoblog Source: Tesla

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Tesla Model S is now cheaper to lease, comes with a return policy

This Is What The Next MS Office For Mac Might Look Like

Chinese site cnBeta has got its hands on some alleged screenshots of an upcoming refresh of Microsoft Office for Mac. Fans of improved productivity and enhanced workflow, your hour is nigh. Read more…

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This Is What The Next MS Office For Mac Might Look Like

You can finally play the best-ever Star Wars games on a modern PC (updated)

Forget that upcoming Battlefront game for now — the Star Wars titles that hardcore fans have really been looking for are finally here. Good Old Games has announced official re-releases of X-Wing and TIE Fighter that let you play these legendary space combat games (arguably, the best Star Wars games ever) on a modern PC without resorting to bootleg copies or hacks. They’ll cost $10 each when they arrive on October 28th, and they’re Special Editions that include both the CD-ROM content (SVGA graphics! Voiceovers!) as well as all the expansion packs. If you’ve been waiting two decades to once more recreate the Death Star trench run or blow up a Rebel frigate, your moment has come. Update: As you may have suspected, GOG posted those game links prematurely — they disappeared shortly after we posted our story. Come back on the 28th and they should work properly. Filed under: Gaming , Software Comments Via: Sir_Crocodile (NeoGAF) , Kotaku Source: GOG (X-Wing) , (TIE Fighter)

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You can finally play the best-ever Star Wars games on a modern PC (updated)

Alienware’s got a massive $300 dock for your new graphics card

We know what you’re thinking: What the hell is a “graphics amplifier”? (Some of you smartasses are probably also wondering if it goes to 11 .) In fact, it is what it sounds like: The Amplifier, a new accessory from Alienware, is a big ol’ shell that lives on your desk, with room for nearly any desktop-grade GPU (anything up to 375 watts). Once you get that set up, you plug the thing into your gaming laptop via a cable and boom, your notebook is suddenly running off a desktop-grade GPU, not the mobile one that came built inside the chassis. As a bonus, the Amplifier also has four powered USB ports, so you can also use this as a docking station for your keyboard, mouse, monitor, et cetera. And yes, that glowing Alienware head on the front has customizable lighting. Of course it does. Sounds kinda rad, right? Right. Well, except for one teeny detail: This requires a proprietary, PCI-Express-based cable, one that only works on the new Alienware 13 . According to a Dell spokesperson, future models will use the same connection port, but for now, even if you have an older Alienware machine you’re outta luck. Of course, too, if you own a notebook from another brand, like Razer or ASUS, this will be of absolutely no use to you. Which makes sense: Dell wants to give people an incentive to buy Alienware laptops. This is, at the end of the day, just an Alienware add-on and little more. But come on, imagine how many of these Dell would sell if it could make the thing work using a common standard. Assuming we haven’t taken the winds out of your sails, this is up for preorder today for $299 in the US and £199 in the UK (GPU not included), and is expected to ship sometime in November. As for the rest of you, well, we’ll always have Spinal Tap , right? Filed under: Gaming , Dell Comments

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Alienware’s got a massive $300 dock for your new graphics card

In 72 hours, Apple Pay is already the wireless payment leader in the US

Paying with your phone still feels fancy, and at WSJD Live today, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained that the company has already registered 1 million customers. Compared to say, iPhone sales, it might not seem all that impressive, but Cook added that Visa and Mastercard apparently said that if you summed up everyone else in the contactless payment market, these kinds of numbers make Apple number one in wireless payments. Already. Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile , Apple Comments

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In 72 hours, Apple Pay is already the wireless payment leader in the US

Nextbit is bringing iOS-like app continuity and ‘limitless’ storage to Android

You may just about recall that Nextbit, a startup formed by ex-Googlers, has been collaborating with Cyanogen on a “really cool” secret project . As it turns out, this is all about the continuity experience across Android devices — very timely given the recent launch of OS X Yosemite and iOS 8.1 , which boast a set of continuity features. Nextbit’s offering is dubbed Baton, and as the name suggests, it lets you quickly pass an app’s state from one Android device to another, meaning you can continue playing on the same level in a game, editing the same document in an app or browsing the same web page right away; with the precondition being the second device must also have Baton and the same app installed. Better yet, app developers don’t have to do anything at all; existing apps should just work. To toggle a pass, simply hold down the “Recent Apps” Android soft key and then choose your desired target device. In a matter of seconds, the target device will wake up and launch the same app in the same state. Similarly, you can do the same to pass the app to the previous device or to a new one — provided that it’s already associated with your CyanogenMod account, running Baton and has the identical app installed. In the case where the passed app isn’t yet installed, the OS will prompt you to download it. The more we look at this, the more we wonder why didn’t Google come up with this. “We’ve taken the cloud and we’ve deeply integrated it into the OS itself, ” Nextbit CEO Tom Moss said proudly. Interestingly, Nextbit’s Baton somewhat contrasts with iOS’ Handoff by getting the user to “push” an app’s state to a target device, as opposed to pulling an app onto one’s selected device. Different initiations, but similar ideas. That said, Handoff only works on iOS and OS X apps that use its APIs (which isn’t surprising given the cross-platform nature), whereas Baton has the advantage of requiring literally no dev work at all. Don’t be mistaken: Baton isn’t an app that you download from the Play Store. Rather, it’s a framework that utilizes the cloud to keep apps and data constantly in sync across multiple Android devices. And since the state of the apps plus the UI’s look and feel are backed up daily, Baton also lets you restore to your desired moment. In fact, this particular part of Baton is already being shipped as a white label product on Japan’s NTT Docomo devices as of last week, and Nextbit is in talks with Chinese OEMs to spread the love further. OnePlus One will definitely be getting Baton. Likewise, Baton will only be available on devices made or sold by licensees, and Moss said he’s getting a pretty good momentum in terms of establishing partnerships. This feature is currently only available to select testers who are running the latest version of CyanogenMod, though Nextbit will soon be launching an invite-only beta program. We’re also told that Baton’s first public release will debut on the “commercially distributed Cyanogen operating system” at some point this year; and yes, this means the popular OnePlus One will definitely be getting Baton. But this is only just the beginning for Nextbit. Seeing that 50 percent of smartphone users run out of storage within the first 12 months, the startup’s next goal is to enable “limitless” storage — local storage and cloud storage combined as one — on Android devices. The execs didn’t dive into details since they are in talks with a carrier partner, but on paper it’s simple: This is achieved by intelligently moving data between local storage and the cloud, so the user wouldn’t notice a thing. “We don’t want to change users’ behaviour, so we’re keeping it totally seamless, ” said Scott Croyle , HTC’s former lead designer. “It’s all about solving the real pain points on our mobile devices, ” Moss added. Filed under: Software , Mobile Comments

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Nextbit is bringing iOS-like app continuity and ‘limitless’ storage to Android

One week later, Google algorithm change hits streaming, torrent sites hard

One of Project Free TV’s domains has dropped in traffic since Google’s algorithm change. se Video streaming and torrent sites have dropped precipitously in Google rankings after the company altered its algorithm last Monday, according to reports from Searchmetrics. One of Project Free TV’s main operating domains, free-tv-video-online.me, fell 96 percent in Searchmetric’s rankings, one of the biggest drops alongside torrentz.eu and thepiratebay.se. Google committed to fighting piracy by decrementing search results that allow users to access illegal streams or torrents back in 2012. The first round of changes didn’t help much, according to interested parties like the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. Google complies with takedown requests, of which it received 224 million in the last year, according to its own report.  The company responded to these within six hours on average, but industry parties pushed for Google to make content sites less visible overall. Even with its new solution, Google notes that this won’t be the same as removing domains from search entirely: “the number of noticed pages is typically only a tiny fraction of the total number of pages on the site,” the company said. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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One week later, Google algorithm change hits streaming, torrent sites hard