Google, Motorola challenging Apple, Samsung with 'X phone'

Google is in the midst of designing a brand new smartphone that is said to "rival" anything coming from mobile giants Apple and Samsung, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In a report on Friday, engineers at now Google-owned Motorola Mobility are developing what is being referred internally to as the "X phone."

Based on information from "people familiar with the matter," Google's strategy for Motorola Mobility appears to revolve around the following points:

The X phone is intended to be a "marquee handset," and it will "stand apart from existing phones."
Motorola is primarily developing mobile phones for Verizon Wireless (mostly for the Droid brand).
Motorola will follow up with new "X tablet" later.

However, the WSJ did also note that the Motorola team is running into some major obstacles before anything can be officially announced -- let alone released.

Here's an example:

For the X phone, an initiative being led by former Google product manager Lior Ron who specialized in mapping, Motorola wanted top-notch features for the phone's camera and photo software, such as better color saturation and the ability to take panoramic shots, two people familiar with the situation said. But some of the features were found to drain battery life or already have been incorporated into popular new devices, such as the iPhone 5 that launched earlier this year, they added.

Motorola also ran into difficulties when it looked into using a bendable screen and materials such as ceramics that would allow the company to make the X Phone more stress resistant, use more colors and mold into different shapes, these people said.

Nevertheless, these moves (if true) are made even more interesting (not to mention complicated) given that Samsung is a major OEM partner within the Android ecosystem. Google has also partnered directly with Samsung on past mobile devices, such as the Galaxy Nexus.

When Google originally made its $12.5 billion bid for Motorola Mobility, there was some skepticism and worry from analysts and manufacturers about how this would affect the OEM partnerships.

Google has tried to downplay any fears, but it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Google is obviously going to direct most of its resources and innovation towards Motorola over other OEM partners -- even one as powerful and important as Samsung.

-zdnet.com

Facebook Poke Vs. Snapchat: What Is The Difference?

Today, Facebook launched a new mobile app called Poke. It’s strikingly similar to a new photo-sharing app that’s taken the blogosphere by storm, called Snapchat.
Both Snapchat and Poke let you send pictures or videos which are then destroyed within a matter of seconds.

But the social network has officially launched its competitor, and the differences are few but important.

The biggest difference between Snapchat and Poke may come down to Terms Of Service, which is fitting with the Instagram conversation still burning.
It’s unclear whether or not Poke keeps the images on Facebook’s servers or not. We’ve reached out to Facebook and are waiting to see what Facebook puts on the now-empty Poke support page.
If it’s in keeping with the Facebook Terms Of Service, Facebook likely gets to hold on to that content for a period of time before it’s deleted. This is what Facebook’s TOS say about your content when it’s destroyed:

When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

The social network may have to develop some new language for this app, as opposed to having all of Facebook’s products fall under the same terms of service. In fact, Josh Constine has learned that Facebook may actually be completely deleting photos from its servers or is at least making them completely inaccessible to users and employees. We’ll wait fo confirmation on that.
In either case, Facebook gives users the option to clear their inbox so any unread messages are instantly destroyed.

Snapchat’s method is to delete the image from its servers as soon as the recipient has seen it.
A second, and important, difference is the way Snapchat and Poke connect you to friends.

Snapchat uses Facebook to find friends, and obviously Poke does the same, so Poke has a leg up in terms of auto-integration. Still, Snapchat may help you actually find more friends with the app, as you can search by phone number or user name to add friends.

It’s also worth considering Snapchat’s username customization. The app has a loyal base of users with chosen screen names. That could be one of the bigger differences between Snapchat and Facebook Poke.
When you download Poke on a mobile device, you instantly log in with your Facebook Profile, relegating you to the name you use on Facebook and the friends you have there.
Though I don’t believe in the slightest that Snapchat is used primarily for sexting, I do think that there may be some users who enjoy snapping with randos (as evidenced by Twitter) that would like to keep their anonymous user name.

Poke also has two extra forms of interaction: text-only messages and “pokes.”
Both let you overlay text onto photos, and both let you draw over photos in a selection of colors (if we’re getting picky, Snapchat has more color options for drawing).

After you’ve taken your picture (or video) and added your text and artwork, both apps let you set a limit on how long the content will be viewable to the recipient. On Poke, the second limit is a choice between 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds, whereas Snapchat lets you choose anywhere between 1 and 10 seconds.

The actual feature differences are slight, but it’ll be interesting to watch this space take off now that Facebook has thrown its towel in the ring.



-http://techcrunch.com

Mobile Photo Editor Snapseed Arrives on Android

Popular iOS mobile photo editing app Snapseed has finally made its way to Android.

Snapseed, the creation of 17-year-old Nik software, launched on iOS a little over a year ago. During the past year, the app has seen a whopping 9.5 million downloads and the company was acquired by Google.

“Before we released Snapseed we were primarily focused on [software for] professionals or advanced amateur photographers -– the folks that are buying digital SLRs,” Josh Haftel, product manager at Google, and previously Nik Software, told Mashable. “The application has been really successful for us.”

Along with the launch of the Android application Thursday, Google is knocking the price of the iOS version down from $4.99 to free.

Nik announced it was working on Snapseed for Android in January of this year at CES. Originally slated to launch on a limited number of devices (specifically NVIDA tablets), Nik's acquisition by Google delayed the launch a bit, but also made it so the app will be compatible with more phones and tablets. Thursday’s release is compatible with all phones and tablets running Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean.

“Our goal was to take a lot of the technologies that professionals around the world have relied on, and make them accessible to anybody,” says Haftel.

Not your average mobile photo editor, the app includes a number of filters and features you won’t find in other photo editing apps. Edits can each be customized to meet your own personal needs. So, you can apply just the right amount of that “Vintage Filter,” or adjust the center point for a particular effect.

“Our goal was to make a tool that would enable you to come up with a creative and customized enhancement,” says Haftel. “Whereas some of the competitive applications out there might just have some predesigned enhancements that you would only be able to do with a single click and not modify it, or conversely have pretty much every tool in the world shoved into a tablet device or a phone, we tried to pick a path in the middle.”

Snapseed has a number of different built-in enhancement options that let you do everything from crop and straighten an image to adjust the focus, many offering choices you might expect to find in a professional photo editor. The Black and White tool, for instance, is the same tool used in Nik’s professional photo editing software. Adjustments are made by simply sliding your finger across the screen to add more or less of whatever you might be working with.

“It’s very simple and straightforward, and also very powerful,” says Haftel. Each enhancement you select can be fine-tuned to the photo you’re working with. So, for instance, if you’re editing a photo of a friend who has a shadow on his face from wearing a baseball cap, you can brighten just his face in the photo rather than the entire image.

When you’re done editing a photo you can save it to the camera roll on your phone, or share it via Google+, Email, Facebook, or Twitter.

“We really love the application,” says Haftel. “We’re really happy to see it getting out there on the Android platform."

Snapseed for Android will be available Thursday in Google Play. Let us know what you think about the photo editor in the comments.

-http://mashable.com

Google+ communities arrive

Vic Gundotra, Google's senior VP of engineering, announced on December 6th that Google has started adding Google+ communities—online Google+ groups devoted to a specific topic such as a work project, a football team, Guild Wars 2 play, whatever—to Google+'s social-network offerings.

Gundotra said, “We started Google+ in the first place to make online sharing as meaningful as the real thing. Too often, our online tools miss the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions, and Google+ aims to fix this. Fortunately we've got a vibrant community to guide us."

He continued, "What’s been missing, however, are more permanent homes for all the stuff you love: the wonderful, the weird, and yes, even the things that are waaay out there.”

Google+ Communities  promises to be “a gathering place for your passions,” Gundotra said, supporting:

• Public or private membership for all kinds of communities with similar interests, whether a shared topic (such as photography) to local neighborhoods to regular poker nights.
• Discussion categories to make it easier for G+ members to find the conversations they care about
• The option to start hangouts and plan events with community members
• Features to share with a community from any +1 button across the Web

I am glad to see this community launch. Google+ circles should have made it easy for people with a particular interest – in Linux, writing science fiction, chess – to talk together. That functionality was never built into Circles, though.

Circles are good at other things, such as sharing and keeping track of friends, family, or co-workers and, to a far lesser extent, keeping in touch with people with similar interests. But they don’t let you focus on a topic; you just get a stream from a person.

For example, I have many people in my Linux circles and other have me in their Linux circles. But none of us always writes about Linux.

So, yes, if you follow Linus Torvalds, you'll read a lot about Linux, but you'll also read a lot about his thoughts on scuba-diving. If you follow me, you'll read my Linux-related posts, but you'll also see a link to the new Star Trek Into Darkness trailer. Perhaps you don’t mind that – how many Linux fans wouldn’t care about Star Trek? – but you might prefer to hear from me only when it’s on a subject you care about intensely.
communities2Creating a Google+ Community is child's play.

To create a Google+ community, take the following steps:

1. Go to https://plus.google.com/communities and click create community.
2. Choose whether yours should be a public or private community.
3. Give it a name.
4. Decide if you want to approve new members who want to join.

-zdnet.com

4Free Video Converter

Easy-to-use video converter to convert various video/audio files.

4Free Video Converter supports converting nearly all popular HD/SD video formats for watching them on PSP, PS3, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, Xbox, mobile phone, PMP, and other multimedia devices. It can also extract transform between audio files and extract audios from videos for making any music suitable for digital devices. Aside from these, you can extract pictures from videos and create video from photos as well.

New features:
1.New interface
2.Add Flip Fuctions, Add Blind Functions
3.Video Converter is now powered with NVIDIA® CUDA™ 5X faster in conversion time
4.Added video profiles supported by the newest iPhone 4.

Key features:
1.Support converting nearly all video and audio formats for PSP, PS3, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, Xbox, BlackBerry, 3GP phone, PMP, Windows Mobile, etc.
2.Allows transfer the converted files to iPod, iPhone and PSP directly.
3.Capture pictures in batches from video; create a video from pictures.
4.Process each task on multi-core CPU, and provide higher speed if there're more CPU cores.
5.Support multithreading and Batch process.
6.Split a single file into several files by choosing an appropriate split mode.
7.Lots of video, audio, tag and expert parameters are adjustable: video codec, audio codec, video/audio quality, bit rate, resolution, sample rate, etc.
8.Set multiple output formats for one source file at one time and get them converted within one click.
9.Offer a BitRate Calculator tool to calculate the video bit rate for customizing the output file size exactly.
10.Run the software in the background.
12.Multiple product languages: English, Chinese, German, Japanese,Spanish,Italian and French.

-brothersoft.com

Applications for Baby Monitoring

Baby monitoring is no doutly very essential and important for every parent. And luckily, many advanced baby monitoring devices such as the iPhone can help parents a lot. An iPhone can actually monitor their child from a different room and even over 3G anywhere in the world with many of special apps.

1 Video Babymonitor

Video Babymonitor lets you view your baby while on the same Wi-Fi network. You can even view the video stream on your computer. There is a noise indicator which allows you to visually see noise in the room. The stream is password protected, which is a nice added protection if you have Wi-Fi thieves.

2 BabySight

BabySight works in conjunction with a Mac app. The benefit here is your Mac will be less likely to run out of battery life. The downside is you need a Mac and often the Mac will be harder to position. There is a night mode, which basically cranks up your Mac’s display to see in the dark.

3 My Baby Monitor

This app captures both photo and sound level from one Iphone and transfer them to the other iPhone(iPod Touch). This allows you to see wherever you are around the house if your baby is awake and crying. The application works through either Wifi connection for further distance or Bluetooth.

4 Baby Monitor HD

Baby Monitor HD lets you have up to four different live video streams. Instead of using an iPhone you must use the Y-Cam cameras, which cost around $300. The technology is really solid and works really well.

-http://news.brothersoft.com

Save files to Google Drive with Chrome

This Chrome extension is particularly useful for Chromebook users and anyone who uses Google Drive to store their files more so than their hard drive. If either of these profiles describes you, then I would urge you to give Save to Drive a try. It's dead simple to use and provides useful functionality for storing any image you stumble across in Chrome, along with HTML5 video and audio files.



When you spot such a file you'd like to keep, right-click it. With Save to Drive installed, you'll see a line -- Save image to Google Drive -- has been added to your right-click menu. Choose it and after two status windows, the file gets added to your Google Drive account.

That's it -- dead simple in operation, no? There are, however, a few things Save to Drive does not let you do, perhaps as a result of the extension's simplicity. First, you can't specify a particular folder for files; they are added to My Drive. Secondly, when you click to open a file obtained via Save to Drive, you will not see a preview -- just a download link. Lastly, it does not support Flash.

Credit: Screenshot by Matt Elliott/CNET

How to embed background music into flash album?

Do you like music? Do you want to create a digital flash album with beautiful background music? Album to Flash Magazine can do this for you. Music is the most beautiful sound in the world. It is really a surprise to hear melody when open the online digital album. You are able to import sound file in MP3 format by using the Album to Flash Magazine.

1. launch Album to Flash Magazine and design your flash pages;

2. click “Publish” icon to open the Template Setting window;

3. find “Sound” item in the left design setting panel. Choose “Enable” for “Enable Sound” bar; import a MP3 file in “Sound File” bar; define the play count in “Sound Loops” bar;

4. finally, don’t forget to click “Apply Change” to save the setting. And you can find a “Sound” icon in the toolbar.

-downloadatoz.com

WeVideo Launches New Cloud-Based Video Editor, Integrates With Facebook

It seems like nearly everyone shoots video these days, mostly on their mobile phones, as consumers now have mini video cameras with them at all times. The problem comes in making those videos presentable so that other people will want to watch them. There have been a few attempts at changing this, such as automatic video editing from the likes of Magisto and Animoto, but few actual human editing tools make things easy for users to do their own videos.

WeVideo launched to the public earlier this year, after previously offering its cloud-based video editor to YouTube users. Now the startup is releasing a new update to the video editing product that is aimed at providing easy-to-use themes and drag-and-drop functionality for users.

The new editor provides two modes of operating: There’s the beginner Storyboard mode, which lets them drag and drop assets next to one another and have them instantly stitched together. There’s also a Timeline mode, which provides more advanced editing features, as users become, uh, more advanced as editors. Users can also instantly spruce up their videos quickly by choosing from a dozen or so professionally designed themes.

In addition to launching new features that make editing easier for novice users, the startup has hooked up with a number of services where users already share their videos and photos. By integrating with Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, Flickr, and Google Drive, users will be able to easily import their existing media content where it lives on the Internet, rather than having to upload it all over again.

The new features should make WeVideo more accessible to users who generally don’t care much about editing or know how to actually do the editing thing. In a survey of its users, nearly 80 percent of its users reported they had little to no editing experience prior to using its platform. The new WeVideo platform is available on YouTube and also through the Chrome Web Store.

-http://techcrunch.com