digest – Page 65

Five features iOS should steal from Android

Aurich Lawson, Age 5 If you’ve come anywhere near a tech site in the last year or so, you’ve heard it all before. “iOS is getting stale compared to Android! It needs some new ideas!” Whether that’s actually true is up for (heated) debate, but those with an open mind are usually willing to acknowledge that Apple and Google could afford to swap a few ideas when it comes to their mobile OSes. So in a fantasy world where we could bring over some of the better Android features to iOS, which features would those be? Among the Ars staff, we sometimes have spirited “conversations” about what aspects would be the best for each company to photocopy. So, we thought we’d pick a few that might go over well with iOS users. Don’t worry, we have a companion post of features that Android could afford to steal from iOS. The copying can go both ways. No one wants iOS to become Android or vice versa. This is about recognizing how to improve iOS with features that would be useful to people depending on their smartphones for more than the occasional text or phone call. We recognize that Apple tries to keep an eye towards elegant implementation, too. So which features are we talking about? Glad you asked… Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Five-year-old runs up $2,500 in-app purchase tab with Apple

Five-year-olds know as well as adults do: iPads are fun to play with. Parents who regularly hand their iDevices over to their children, take note: you can still be burned by kids making in-app purchases. The BBC published a story on Friday highlighting a five-year-old’s impressive feat in running up a £1,700 iTunes bill—about $2,500—after his father entered a passcode to allow him to download a “free” game from the App Store. The details of the situation reveal a series of unfortunate events that led to the truly epic tab, though Apple has since refunded the money. There are a few things the Kitchens could have done better when their son, Danny, began using an iPad to play games. The article doesn’t specify whether Danny’s father entered a passcode for the device, for the App Store, or within the app itself, but the last scenario listed seems most likely. Entering a password to download apps in the App Store used to mean the user could begin charging in-app purchases without re-entering that password for 15 minutes as the default iOS behavior. Apple made that more difficult with iOS 4.3 in early 2011 by requiring the App Store password a second time when in-app purchases are made. Assuming the family’s iPad was running a more recent version of iOS, it sounds like Danny’s father entered his password when Danny began to make purchases, not realizing what he was authorizing. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Sodium-air battery shows potential

Pete Slater With battery technology being critical for so many things, interest in building better batteries just keeps on growing. The recent Tesla Model S testing debacle, explosive laptop batteries , and Boeing battery problems give us hints at how close to the edge engineers operate batteries. Volume, weight, and energy are key. Minimize the first two and maximize the last to obtain energy storage nirvana. Lithium-ion batteries rule the roost at the moment, but as capacities are already on the order of 200Wh/kg, we’re pushing up against their limits—basic chemical reactions provide a fixed amount of energy. The search for alternatives is being pursued by a rapidly growing field of eyebrow-less engineers (just kidding; battery mishaps don’t happen that often ). A recent publication on a sodium-air battery shows promise, but it also demonstrates what a huge amount of work still needs to be done. The key to a battery is a simple chemical reaction that, at its heart, is the exchange of an electron. During the exchange, a certain amount of energy is released, usually in the form of heat. That’s why, when you drop some sodium metal in water, the energy released is enough to cause explosions. The role of the battery is to intercept that electron and release its energy in the form of useful work. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Internet Explorer 10 finally released for Windows 7

Four months after Microsoft released Internet Explorer 10 with and for Windows 8, Redmond has finally released a version of the company’s newest browser for its 700 million Windows 7 users in 95 other languages too. The new browser will be available as an optional update immediately. Anyone with the release preview installed will have it sent as an “important” update. That’s significant because Windows Update will, in its default configuration, install it silently and automatically. Over coming months, Microsoft will classify Internet Explorer 10 as “important” in more and more markets to ensure it is installed automatically as widely as possible. This marks a significant change from Microsoft’s past practices. Traditionally, the company has released new browsers only as optional updates, and further, as interactive updates that required clicking through a EULA before installation actually took place. In late 2011, the company changed this policy, converting Internet Explorer 9 to an automatic (“important”) update. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sony patent application measures load times to detect pirated games

Sony seems prepared to unleash a new tool in its never-ending battle against game pirates, using measured load times, of all things, to detect certain illegitimate copies of its games. Sony’s patent for “Benchmark measurement for legitimate duplication validation” was filed way back in August 2011, but it was only published by the US patent office late last week. The patent describes a method for a system that would measure load times for games loaded into a system against a previously measured threshold for what those load times ought to be on a standard, unmodified game and system: For example, if an authentic game title is distributed exclusively on [Blu-ray discs] having a total benchmark load time of 45 seconds on a game console BD drive, the acceptable range of load times could be from 40 to 50 seconds. Thus, a total measured title load time of four seconds would be outside of the acceptable range of total load times for a legitimate media type. Even if the pirated media results in similar overall load times to the original media (if a hacker added an intentional delay, for instance, or if a pirated game on a hard drive loaded similarly to an authentic game on a flash drive), the method described in the patent also measures load times for individual segments of the game code to detect fraudulent copies. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Sony patent application measures load times to detect pirated games

Earthquakes’ booms big enough to be detected from orbit

Artist’s impression of GOCE satellite. European Space Agency Last year, we reported on some mysterious booms in a small Wisconsin town that turned out to be small earthquakes. While it was an unusual story, it’s actually not that uncommon of an occurrence. Early in the summer of 2001, folks in Spokane, Washington started reporting similar booms. The sounds continued, off and on, for about five months. The mystery didn’t last long, as the earthquakes responsible were picked up by seismometers in the area. (A particularly loud one that took place exactly one month after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York did rattle some nerves, however.) In total, 105 earthquakes were detected, with a couple as large as magnitude 4.0. For most of them, there wasn’t good enough seismometer coverage to really pinpoint locations, but some temporary units deployed around the city in July located a number of events pretty precisely: the earthquakes were centered directly beneath the city itself. While a dangerously large earthquake is pretty unlikely in Wisconsin, the possibility can’t be ignored in Washington. The 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand was only a magnitude 6.3, but the damage was extensive because the epicenter was so close to the city. In L’Aquila, Italy, a swarm of small earthquakes in 2009 was followed by a deadly magnitude 6.3. (The poor public communication of risk during that swarm netted six seismologists manslaughter convictions .) Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Earthquakes’ booms big enough to be detected from orbit

Reports: Microsoft planning to unveil Xbox successor at April event

With Sony jump-starting the next-generation console hype train with its PlayStation 4 reveal this week , it seems Microsoft might not be willing to wait for June’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) to unveil its follow-up to the Xbox. Computer & Video Games is reporting that Microsoft is planning a “one-off media event” to show off its new system in early April, based on information from unnamed sources inside and outside of Microsoft. VG247 has corroborated CVG’s information , saying it has “also received word of the April event,” and National Alliance Securities analyst Mike Hickey has previously said he expected Microsoft to announce its console successor in April. Internet sleuths on gaming forum NeoGAF have noted that the company that helped organize Microsoft’s E3 2012 media briefing registered the domain XboxEvent.com just yesterday , suggesting that, um, an Xbox event might be in the works. Practically the entire professional game industry will be gathered together in San Francisco at the end of March for the Game Developers Conference, which would also seem like a natural time for Microsoft to reveal its next-gen plans to an interested audience. Then again, Microsoft could use GDC as a sort of pre-tease tease, letting slip certain small, developer-centric details before a fuller April event. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Reports: Microsoft planning to unveil Xbox successor at April event

Google shows the world its official Android 4.2.2 changelog

When Android 4.2.2 quietly debuted last week , most users were left guessing about what exactly had been included in the software update. Helpful community sites like AndroidPolice had put together a thorough listing of some of the new features in Android 4.2.2, but any official listing of updates had yet to be made. Today, Google published its official changelog for its Android 4.2.2 update, as well as everything else that comes as a part of the Jelly Bean package. Many of the bullet points marked as “new” actually identify features that have been included in Android 4.2 since its initial launch and have since been thoroughly discussed. However, the changelog does include some of the minor features not previously touched on, like networking changes that were made to improve Wi-Fi Direct support and faster captive portal detection. Updates also include minor features, like the fact that TalkBack can now be accessed right from the power menu. You can also view the entirety of the Google Cards updates that have been made in Android 4.2. If you’re curious, you can view the official changelog at Google’s official Android site, then try out some of the features you may not have known existed on your Android 4.2 device. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Google shows the world its official Android 4.2.2 changelog

Adobe ships new features, new apps, exclusively to cloud subscribers

Adobe today shipped the first public preview of Edge Reflow. First shown off last September , the new application for responsive Web design is designed to make it easier for developers to produce webpages that alter their layout in response to changes in screen size, enabling the same page to be used on both desktop and portable devices. The company is also shipping an update for three other tools. It’s adding direct support for using the free Edge Web Fonts to its Web development app Dreamweaver and its timeline-based animation software Edge Animate. Edge Animate is also picking up new support for CSS gradients. Finally, the Edge Code HTML editor, currently available as a preview, is being updated to support live previewing and a quick edit mode that allows scripts and styles to be edited where they’re used even when they’re stored in separate files. The new Edge Reflow app looks handy for those interested in responsive Web design, and the other improvements are pleasant if incremental. The most significant thing is not the updates themselves, however, but the fact that they’re being made exclusive to Creative Cloud subscribers. Buyers of the traditional perpetually licensed versions of Creative Suite are excluded. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Adobe ships new features, new apps, exclusively to cloud subscribers

Skype calls now equivalent to one-third of global phone traffic

TeleGeography New research (PDF) from TeleGeography, a telecom market analysis firm, shows that worldwide Skype usage is now equivalent to over one-third of all international phone traffic—a record level. The firm’s new data, released Wednesday , shows that “international telephone traffic grew 5 percent in 2012, to 490 billion minutes.” At the same time, “cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.” While that doesn’t mean that telcos are going to go out of business anytime soon, it does mean that they are certainly continuing to feel the heat. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Skype calls now equivalent to one-third of global phone traffic

Ken May

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