In 2011, Apple introduced AirDrop for OS X Lion , a feature that makes sharing a file between two Macs as easy as dragging and dropping it. Two and a half years later, we’re still waiting to see it on iOS. Could we finally get peer-to-peer iPhone and iPad sharing in iOS 7? Read more…
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AirDrop File Sharing: The Most Persistant iOS Rumor Has Returned
If you thought smartphones were ubiquitous now — and in certain places they pretty much are — prepare for a whole lot more people to be coming online on their phones in the next five years. Network kit maker Ericsson has published its latest mobility report , based on traffic measurements of live mobile networks, which projects that global smartphone subscriptions will rise from 1.2 billion in 2012 to 4.5 billion by the end of 2018 — a CAGR of 25%. Ericsson is also expecting the monthly mobile data usage per smartphone to rise from 450MB in 2012 to 1,900MB by 2018. Even larger growth is on the cards for tablets, with monthly data usage forecast to rise from 600MB in 2012 to 3,100MB in 2018 — a CAGR of 30%. By 2018, Ericsson also reckons LTE (4G) will cover 60% of the world’s population. As for the mobile data driver, it’s video — with video growth underpinned by increasing availability of faster speed networks as LTE spreads. Larger devices with bigger screens with higher resolutions are also causing users to gobble more MB, according to Ericsson: The fastest growing segment in mobile data traffic is video. Increasing usage is driven by continual growth in the amount of available content as well as the better network speeds that come with HSPA and LTE development. Larger device screens and better resolutions will also drive video traffic as they will enable high definition and eventually even ultra high definition video. Ericsson’s data shows video makes up the largest segment of mobile data traffic today — and is expected to grow by around 60% annually until the end of 2018 when it’s forecast to account for around half of total global traffic, dominating mobile content consumption. Good news if you’re Vine , then. The data also shows music streaming gaining in popularity — with a projected annual growth rate of around 50%, although Ericsson notes there is a “high degree of uncertainty” in the audio forecast because it’s “very dependent on how music streaming services develop over the coming years”. So that likely refers to stuff like Apple being rumoured to get into the streaming space , and the knock on effect a Cupertino iRadio could have on other services, should it indeed come to pass as rumoured. On the social and web front, Ericsson reckons web browsing and social networking will each constitute around 10% of the total data traffic volume in 2018 — so achieving some sort of parity, even if social networking still ends up taking up more of mobile users’ time and therefore more mindshare. According to Ericsson’s data, smartphone users are spending the largest portion of their time on social networks: an average of 85 minutes a day in some networks. Ericsson has also broken out mobile traffic by device type, to give a breakdown of what different devices are being used for right now, which shows how quickly video has established itself on tablets — passing smartphones video volumes already. The latter device type remains the most popular device for social networking, which dovetails with how personal smartphones are vs tablets and laptops which can be shared within groups and families:
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Ericsson: Global Smartphone Subs To Hit 4.5BN By 2018 (25% CAGR), Video To Account For Half Of All Mobile Data Traffic
Some of ASUS’s big Computex 2013 launches today involved the latest 802.11ac WiFi flavor, and since you’ll need to feed them with a router packing the same tech, ASUS has also announced one of those: the RT-AC68U. The company claims it’s the first dual-band 802.11ac router with AC1900 data rates up to 1900 Mbit/s, thanks to AiRadar beamforming, which helps bring a stronger connection and 150 percent better range, too (if accurate). You’ll also be able to share files between ASUS routers with USB-attached drives thanks to a router-to-router sync mode, negating the need for a switched-on PC or other device. There’s no word on pricing or availability, but the previous RT-AC66U flagship ran about $200 or so — so we’d be surprised if it came in under that figure. Filed under: Peripherals , Wireless , ASUS Comments
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ASUS launches dual-band router with combined 1900Mbit/s speeds
You surely remember that image of Saturn’s 1,250 mile-wide polar hurricane shot by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Today European Space Agency released a similarly stunning image of Mars’s north polar ice cap on the 10th anniversary of the ESA’s Mars Express mission launched on 2 June 2003. Read more…
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This Is The Incredibly Swirling North Polar Ice Cap Of Mars
For those of you who expected ASUS to only announce Ultrabooks here at Computex, the following news might seem a little out of left field. The company just unveiled the G10, a desktop with a portable battery that doubles as a built-in UPS (uninterrupted power source) — a product for those who refuse to take any chances on data safety. On the inside, you’ve got your choice of Haswell processors, along with NVIDIA GeForce GTX650 graphics, 8GB of RAM, and a 1TB HDD paired with a 128GB SSD. Taking a quick tour of the hardware, you’ll find a 16-in-1 memory card reader, a DVD burner, six USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 connections, HDMI-out, DVI-D and VGA. It’s slated for a Q3 or Q4 launch, we’re told, but we still don’t have a price or precise on-sale date. Naturally, we’ll update this post as we learn more on that front but for now, enjoy the hands-on shots below and the demo video after the break. Gallery: ASUS Desktop PC G10 hands-on Filed under: Desktops , ASUS Comments
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ASUS intros the Desktop PC G10, packing a built-in UPS and portable battery (hands-on video)
The established regime in Turkey (not to mention many other countries: take your pick) may not like any-to-many communications, but luckily established regimes don’t always get the final word. An anonymous reader writes “Lahana is my little side project to help people access the Internet and Tor via Amazon EC2 free tier-based VPNs. It’s a couple of scripts that set up a new VPN in a couple of minutes that automatically tunnels everything through Tor. It’s easy to share credentials with groups of people and for most people is free to set up and use. I built it with Turkey in mind, but it no doubt has other uses.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Disposable VPN: Tor Gateways With EC2 Free Tiers
MediaPortal 2 has progressed quite nicely, bringing exciting new features for every release! The rapid increase in features is a result of the clean code, structure and architecture that MediaPortal 2 is built upon. The main goal of MediaPortal 2 is to provide the best mediacenter software available when it comes to usability, flexibility and extensibility. While you’re waiting for the highly anticipated Alpha 2 release of MediaPortal 2 , here is a short summary of what MediaPortal 2 will bring to the table. Easy installation and configuration The installation process is quite straight forward, with only one setting to configure; whether you are installing as a client, a server – or both (we’ll get back to that later). The entire process takes less than two minutes. Then you’re going to need to do some configuration, like the path to where your media is located, or Windows power saving settings. Everything is configured from inside the MediaPortal 2 GUI – no need to exit to launch a configuration utility any more! Low resource usage and swift startup When you first start MediaPortal 2 , you’ll first notice the rather simple splash screen without any information on what’s going on in the background. The simple reason for this is that there really isn’t any time to read anything before you enter MediaPortal 2 – about five seconds later! Feel free to use task manager to monitor how much CPU and memory MediaPortal 2 uses and you’ll find that it uses very little resources. This is of course good for both economy and the environment, but most of all it means the road to a near inaudible system is suddenly far less bumpy. Robust and flexible skin engine Oh, the skin engine! Where to start! As you might have read already, the skin engine is totally rewritten and in contrast to MediaPortal 1 , the MediaPortal 2 user interface is mainly based on vector graphics and uses less images. The advantage of using vector definitions for graphical elements instead of pixel-graphics will make them scale to different resolutions without any loss of quality. Kinda cool when we’re entering the 4K era, ey? Another cool thing is how robust the skin engine is. If you’re a long time MediaPortal 1 user, you might remember the days we searched the forum for zip’s containing plugins and skin-files to match your preferred skin – just hoping that everything was the same version. MediaPortal 1 has come a long way since then (thank god!), many thanks to MPEI . Because the skins are constructed hierarchically in MediaPortal 2 , there will never be an issue where a particular plugin won’t work with a specific skin. Worst case scenario the template for the default skin will be used. Dedicated client / server – architecture The MediaPortal 2 Server is responsible for the central management of all media. You can connect multiple clients to the server and across all those clients you get the same data. Besides the media files itself, this also includes the meta data like genre, summary, actors, as well as the play count, watched state and last time a media has been played. As a result the client is just that – a client to browse and play content from the server. You can just hook up a new computer with the MediaPortal 2 Client installed, connect to the server, and you are just about ready to go! Of course you can still use one computer for both client and server. There is no graphical user interface (GUI) available when running the server only, but you can always monitor the status of the server from the system tray. Complete modular design Another thing that separates MediaPortal 2 from every other media center is the modular design. In MediaPortal 2 everything is a plugin. Everything! Skins, media players – they are all “just a plug-in”. Due to the modular design, one plugin won’t screw up another plugin and every plugin can thus easily be improved, added/removed or replaced. Which brings us to the next thing… Multiple player architecture Due to the modular design mentioned above, there is no longer “the” media player, as in all other media centers, but rather “a” media player. You can even call multiple players at the same time, which means you now can watch a muted channel while you listen to music (great for football/soccer half-time breaks!) or enjoy the benefits of having Picture-in-Picture (PiP)! Oh, and have you heard about video background? Basically, it is a perfectly looped video used as skin background. You can see a video of it below, but believe me – it is even better than it looks when you get it on your big screen! Try the all new Titanium skin with this loop , and be amazed! Ease-of-use localization MediaPortal 2 uses the web-based localization platform Transifex . Translations are done by both team members and our excellent community. Even if MediaPortal 2 is only in Alpha-state, localization support is quite advanced already – currently 18 languages are more than 90 % complete ! Built-in meta data extractors Not only does MediaPortal 2 offer built-in meta data extractors for music/audio, but it even extracts meta data from videos and pictures. Got a lot of MKV or MP4 media files? You tag them – we read them! Got a GPS within you digital camera, or tag your pics manually with the geo-location? Great! MediaPortal 2 reads it from the EXIF meta data and allows you to display and filter by the country/region/city where they have been taken. And more… much more… As stated before, this is just a short summary of what MediaPortal 2 has to offer. Lots of minor – but still important stuff is already implemented, like proper 3rd party library usage, HTML build reports and excellent thumbnail handling – done with Windows API with fallback method. Follow the development of MediaPortal 2 If you want to follow what’s going on regarding MediaPortal 2 , then I recommend that you subscribe to this thread . If you really want to see how much MediaPortal 2 has progressed since the last release, have a look at the changelog . GIVE IT A SPIN! MediaPortal 2 (Alpha 2) is just around the corner. Make sure to give it a try once it is released! (And if you can’t wait – or want to help test – you can find a pre-release here ) ::: Discussion thread for this blog :::
MWE Lab’s Emperor 1510 LX—don’t call it a chair. MWE Labs Science fiction is filled with cherished seats of power, workstations that put the universe a finger-touch or a mere thought away. Darth Vader had his meditation pod, the Engineers of Prometheus had their womb-like control stations, and Captain Kirk has the Captain’s Chair. But no real-life workstation has quite measured up to these fictional seats of power in the way that Martin Carpentier’s Emperor workstations have. The latest “modern working environment” from Carpentier’s Quebec City-based MWE Lab is the Emperor 1510 LX. With a retractable monitor stand that can support up to five monitors (three 27-inch and two 19-inch), a reclining seat with thigh rest, a Bose sound system, and Italian leather upholstery, the Emperor 1510 LX looks more like a futuristic vehicle than a workstation. And it’s priced like a vehicle, too—it can soon be yours for the low, low price of $21,500. Tale of the Scorpion In 2006, Carpentier was slaving away as a web designer when he reached a breaking point. He was tired of his tangle of cables, the struggle to manage multiple monitors, and the horrible ergonomics that came with a standard computer desk. Inspired by the emperor scorpion, Carpentier modeled his workstation after its tail, with the monitors suspended at the stinger. Read 12 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Seat of Power: the computer workstation for the person with everything
Yahoo’s been on a bit of a warpath lately, shuttering old services and streamlining existing ones — the firm classic email interface , slated to discontinue tomorrow, June 3rd, is the latest to get the axe. We knew this was coming , of course, but its more than a mere visual update: users who choose to upgrade to the new interface will have to agree to Yahoo’s updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Yahoo’s own help documentation points out why this matters, explaining that the new ToS includes “the acceptance of automated content scanning and analyzing of your communications content, which Yahoo users to deliver product features, relevant advertising and abuse protection.” Nothing new for Gmail users, but a change worth consideration. The company says users can opt out of contextual advertising or otherwise dodge it with a desktop email client, but will still need to accept the new ToS to continue using Yahoo Mail. Mostly par for the course, but if you’re concerned about privacy, you can read up on the changes for yourself at the attached source link. Filed under: Internet Comments Via: TechCrunch Source: Yahoo
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PSA: Yahoo Mail Classic shuts down June 3rd
PolygamousRanchKid writes “Turkey’s prime minister on Sunday rejected claims that he is a ‘dictator,’ dismissing protesters as an extremist fringe even as thousands returned to the landmark Istanbul square that has become the site of the fiercest anti-government outburst in years. With Turkish media otherwise giving scant reports about the protests, many turned to social media outlets for information on the unrest. ‘There is now a menace which is called Twitter,’ Erdogan said. ‘The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.’ ‘The people are finally standing up, speaking up and fighting for their rights,’ said Hakan Tas, a deputy for the Left Party in Berlin’s local assembly, who took part in the protest.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Turkish PM: “To Me, Social Media Is the Worst Menace To Society.”