Get Location-Triggered Task Reminders on Your Phone

Forget to pick up paper towels on your Costco trip? Neer’s location-triggered reminders could help save the day next time around. That feature is available now as an easter egg, unbeknownst to anyone, and will make its formal debut in the startup’s iPhone and Android apps at SXSW next week.
Neer, the private location-sharing app for iPhone and Android, is infinitely more useful now that you can set to-dos, attach them to places and then get a buzz next time you’re in the area.
Here’s how to unlock the hidden feature: navigate to the “Feedback” tab, press and hold the card title “Feedback,” and type “todo” (case sensitive) into the pop-up. Voila, you now have access to magic location reminders, as Neer calls them.
Come next week, new versions of Neer for iPhone and Android will put to-dos front and center for all users. With this update, an individual could download and use Neer just for location-triggered to-dos without ever having to create an account. The no-registration-needed, single-purpose option is a clever ploy to attract potential new users at this year’s SXSW interactive event.
Soon, to-dos can be shared and assigned to friends and family in the application. Mom could then add a to-do for Dad to pick up those paper towels, and Dad would get the reminder on his Costco run. This sharing functionality won’t be ready in time for SXSW, but it’s in the works and coming soon.
In other Neer news, founder Ian Heidt reports that the startup’s background location technology is getting more sophisticated by the day. “The app now has the ability to ‘learn’ and adjust to each person’s individual schedule,” he says. “We think this has the possibility to dramatically improve battery because most of the time you are not moving, and therefore Neer doesn’t need to check location.”

Android Wins in the U.S. Smartphone Wars [REPORT]

Android has eclipsed iPhone and RIM devices as the number one smartphone OS in the United States, according to a new report from Nielsen.
Android OS smartphones account for 29% of the U.S. market; iOS and RIM devices stand at 27% each, according to Nielsen’s research.
Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 devices account for 10% of the U.S. smartphone market; Palm is at 4%; Symbian holds onto a 2% share; and finally, there’s a 1% “other” category, which would include OSes like the Linux-based MeeGo.
Before you start planning your ticker tape parade, these are stats from just one group, and conflicting stats from other research and mobile organizations are likely to appear in the very near future. Nevertheless, estimates from last year stated Android might be the top mobile OS by 2014; to say that this new report trumps all expectations of Android’s market performance is a drastic understatement.
Late last year, we saw Android adoption surpass Windows Mobile; a January 2011 report showed Android nipping at iOS’s heels. And just last month, Nielsen’s stats showed Android, iOS and RIM in a dead heat.
So, what might have been the determining factors in Android’s ever-accelerating success?
First, we’d call your attention to the original Motorola Droid, the OS’s first real blockbuster device, and in some ways, the first device that felt truly consumer-ready. The Droid reportedly sold 100,000 units at its launch, 250,000 units in its first week, and sparked a wave of Android popularity that had Android smartphones flying off shelves literally faster than they could be stocked.
The other big turning point for the Android ecosystem was the launch of Froyo, the OS version that finally brought Android to parity with the iPhone — both in technical reality and in the fickle and emotional mind of the public. For the first time, smartphone buyers began to see Android devices as a viable alternative to the iPhone, not a “less-than” knockoff or poor man’s substitute.
Perhaps the kicker for Android’s popularity was the fact that more and more first-time smartphone buyers were turning to Android. And why wouldn’t they? Android devices, because of their diversity, offered more hardware options on more carriers, making the smartphone upgrade easier and more appealing than ever.
In the comments, let us know why you think Android’s success and adoption rates have been on such a drastic uptick in the past couple years. Is it the constantly improving technology? The combined marketing efforts of a handful of multinational corporations? Or something else?

iPad Trade-in Economy Explodes, Portends Huge iPad 2 Sales

If the burgeoning trade-in activity for the original iPad is any indication, sales of the iPad 2 could exceed even the most brazen predictions.
Trade-in programs from Gazelle, eBay and NextWorth are all reporting sustained levels of user interest. Meanwhile, Apple is giving some recent iPad 1 buyers a $100 discount.

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Trade-in Offers Draw Customers By the Thousands

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Gazelle.com was one of the first “reCommerce” companies to advertise and promote its buyback rates for original iPad units. Higher than expected demand, coupled with Apple’s decision to drop the price of original iPad units by $100, forced the company to adjust its rates just hours after the Apple keynote.We spoke to Kristina Kennedy, who’s in charge of branding and communications for Gazelle, about the first day trade-in figures and projections for the future. Kennedy told us that Gazelle saw more than 2,500 iPad trades on Wednesday paying out in excess of $1 million.
As of this afternoon, more than 1,000 trades have already cleared the site. Kennedy expected to see more than 2,000 trades for Thursday alone.
Historically, Kennedy says, trade-in volume has been an accurate projector of sales for an upcoming product. But the iPad has exceeded the company’s expectations. When the iPhone 4 was announced in June, Gazelle saw around 1,200 trade-ins the first day. That included all iPhone models, from the original iPhone to the iPhone 3GS.
First day iPad trade-ins were nearly double that.
Robert Wesley, head of business development at NextWorth — another company that offers electronics upgrades and trade-ins — also reports record iPad activity.
In the last three days, NextWorth has seen almost three times the number of iPad units it received the entire month of February.
NextWorth has a retail partnership with Target stores in the U.S., where customers can receive credit towards a purchase or a pre-paid Target gift card when they trade-in used electronics in-store. iPad units will be accepted for trade-in at Target locations by the end of March.
Not to be outdone, eBay’s Instant Sale program is also drawing significant interest from iPad owners. Since the Instant Sale program launched in October, eBay rep Annie Lescroart says, 22,000 iPads have been offered on the site. Some 7,100 were posted after the iPad 2 announcement.
So in less than 24 hours, eBay’s Instant Sale program generated 1/3 of its total iPad offers.
For comparison, eBay provided us with metrics for other tablets. Since October, 1,500 offers have been made for non-iPad tablets. Only 58 of those came after Wednesday’s announcement.

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Trading in for an Upgrade?

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According to both Gazelle and NextWorth, the cheapest iPad — the 16GB Wi-Fi model — is the most popular trade-in unit. Nearly 40% of iPad trades on Gazelle have been for the 16GB Wi-Fi unit. The next most popular unit, oddly enough, is the most expensive: the 64GB iPad 3G.Gazelle’s Kennedy believes the 16GB iPad (which originally retailed for $499) makes a particularly good upgrade target. Consumers have had a year with the unit and can now upgrade — not just to an iPad 2, but to one with a larger storage capacity.
As for the 64GB iPad 3G, the high buyback price on that unit is helping to shift sales. Trades for that unit are in the $500 range.
NextWorth is seeing similar data. The 16GB Wi-Fi iPad accounts for 29% of the company’s trade-ins in the last three days. The 64GB 3G iPad represents 23%. (eBay does not yet break down resales by model.)
Apple has also never broken out iPad sales by unit, which makes it impossible to judge if trade-ins are in proportion to general iPad distribution.

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Market Prices Stabilized

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Kennedy believes the market prices for the original iPad units have now stabilized. She expects pricing to remain consistent in the week leading up to the iPad 2′s March 11th pre-order date — and that some models may even see an uptick in value.After the 11th, she expects another dip in iPad market prices. Still, her advice — which is also the advice from NextWorth and eBay — is that consumers lock in their prices now before the 11th. That will give them time to get the new iPad while still holding on to the old one.

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Apple Offers $100 Refunds to Recent Buyers

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Of course, not all iPad owners are interested in trading in their units. In fact, some individuals just purchased an iPad. The good news is that consumers who purchased a unit from the Apple Store or Apple.com may be able to get a refund.According to CNET, Apple will also be offering customers who purchased an iPad in the two weeks leading up to the iPad 2 announcement a $100 refund. Apple’s standard return policy in the U.S. is 14-days for non-engraved units. Recent iPad buyers might just want to return the old unit outright and wait another week.
Customers who ordered an iPad online prior to the iPad 2 announcement need to call Apple to process the $100 refund. Retail customers just need to bring their receipt back to the Apple Store.

MTV Music Meter Comes to iPhone & iPad

MTV’s music discovery tool, the Music Meter, makes the jump today to the Apple platform with apps for the iPhone and iPad.
The Music Meter launched in December as an online app for music discovery — but only for bands on the indie up and up, as opposed to the all-encompassing Lady Gaga.
MTV worked with music intelligence company The Echo Nest — which recently partnered with Island Def Jam — to develop an algorithm that combs through blogs, social media, video and more traditional metrics (like radio plays and sales) to determine which bands are getting the most attention each day.
Now, that same tool is available as a free app [iTunes link] on Apple devices (in addition to Android smartphones, and select Samsung connected TVs), where it seems much more natural than the in-browser iteration. Simply click on any artist on the chart (Toro Y Moi is currently trending at number one) for tracks, photos, tweets referencing that band, news and a bio.
Sadly, one can only listen to 30-second previews of tracks, courtesy of Rhapsody. This seems to be the case even if one is a Rhapsody subscriber, which seems a little silly — especially since MTV and the subscription services are currently offering a 60-day free trial. This seems like a missed opportunity, since we can easily see users of the app being turned on to Rhapsody while discovering new music, and subsequently signing up for the service when the trial ran out.
Still, the app is a clean-looking, slick way to discover music. One can also search for bands via the app, which we can see being useful when one is out and about or chatting with friends about new acts.

4 Facebook E-Commerce Tips for Brands

With more than 600 million active users on Facebook, the world’s largest social network is no longer just about “liking” brands when it comes to marketing. Today, Facebook users span various demographics and demand immediate value in return for demonstrating loyalty and joining new Facebook communities.
In addition to incentivizing new fans with automatic submissions to contests, businesses should also be utilizing Facebook e-commerce tools to develop a true social shopping experience. By integrating purchasing into their branded pages, businesses can effectively take advantage of Facebook as a viable sales vehicle with proven ROI.
Here are four tips to help businesses of any size begin generating revenue on Facebook.

5 Fresh Digital Media Trends to Watch

Digital media, as many a Mashable reader is aware, is evolving at a rapid pace. It’s three months in to 2011, and already we’re witnessing the realization of many of our predictions for news media, digital advertising and startups this year.
Social tools, such as Facebook and Tumblr, are coming to play a new role in news reporting and distribution, while brands are taking on the role of the media by creating and publishing content themselves. Meanwhile, consumers are beginning to access digital content across more devices, often simultaneously, and content creators are responding by creating content for multiple platforms and selling access to them in new subscription offerings.
Those are just a few of the trends we’re observing across digital media, which we explore in greater depth below.

Is the Personalization of the Web Making Us Dumber?

As a Mashable reader, you’re probably well-aware that Facebook’s News Feed and Google’s search results adjust based on your behavior and demonstrated preferences. But are these and the web’s other algorithms making us collectively uninformed as a society? That’s the argument that Eli Pariser, the former executive director of MoveOn.org, made in a TED talk on Thursday in Long Beach, California.
Pariser started his talk by noting a trend he saw on Facebook. Over time, he said, the conservative friends he had started following to ensure a diverse set of viewpoints (Pariser describes himself as “progressive” politically) gradually started disappearing. As he would soon discover, that was a result of him clicking far more frequently on the links posted by his more liberal friends.
This “invisible algorithmic editing of the web,” as Pariser describes it, “moves us to a world where the Internet shows us what it thinks we need to see, but not what we should see.” Beyond Facebook, Pariser notes the huge diversity of search results his friends find on Google about topics like Egypt, where one friend sees news about recent protests and Lara Logan, while another sees results about travel and vacations.
In turn, Pariser believes we’re collectively creating what he calls a personal “filter bubble,” which is also the title of a book on the subject due out in May. And while he falls short of arguing that the trend towards personalization must end, he says the likes of Facebook and Google need to “have a sense of civic responsibility, and let us know what’s getting filtered … [and offer] controls to let us decide what gets through and what doesn’t.”
What he’d like to see is an information world that “gives us a bit of Justin Bieber and a bit of Afghanistan,” marked by controls that let us filter content by its relevance, importance, comfort (topics that can be difficult to discuss or read), challenge level, and points of view (with an option to see “alternative”).
Of course, much of that goes against the history of the Internet, which has been marked by its ability to connect like-minded people, both for good and for bad. In other words, Google and Facebook could build such controls and even bake more human editing into their algorithms, but do people even want them?
What do you think? Is the personalization of the Web making us less informed? Do the companies driving innovation on the web have a civic responsibility to give us a fuller world view? Sound off in the comments.

Do You Need a Credit Report for Your Online Life?

Your credit score carries significant weight in your financial life. Want to rent an apartment or buy a car? Good luck doing so with a bad credit score. The same logic applies to landing a job if you have a negative online reputation.
So says MyWebCareer, an early stage startup that has developed algorithms to run your “Career Score,” a credit check for your professional web persona. The service analyzes your Facebook profile, LinkedIn network, Twitter account and Google juice — evaluating more than 200 different variables in the process — and spits out a score between 350 to 850.
Where you fall could be an indicator of how employable you are and indicate your overall professional attractiveness.

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Credit Check

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Once you grant MyWebCareer access to Facebook and/or LinkedIn, the service works to retrieve employment history and searches Google for references to you in any of the positions you’ve claimed to have held. The startup is also running semantic analysis on your Facebook updates, checking out your Stack Overflow profile, if you have one, and factoring in your Klout score, among other things.
The resulting score — which remains private until you opt to share it publicly — is evaluated against your peers in three areas: your connectedness, professional online brand and internet search footprint. The service will highlight potentially offending status updates and make specific recommendations for how you can improve your score.
If a search query doesn’t bring up results, for instance, relating to past jobs, MyWebCareer will call your attention to these eyebrow-raising issues.
The public beta service, only having launched in February, is far from complete. Co-founders Greg Coyle and Nip Zalavadia say they want to make the Career Score as reflective of your online reputation as possible. This means they’ll continue to add data sources — like Quora once there’s a publicly accessible API — in the future.

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The Credit Bureau of the Web?

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If MyWebCareer’s calculation is meant to be a credit score for your digital life, then the startup aims to be like an Experian or Equifax.
This presents it with the challenge of convincing consumers, and eventually business users, that its score means something significant, beyond the novelty of the site itself. Because other startups also traffic in reputation management (Brand-Yourself) and online influence scoring (Klout), this will not be an easy sell.
In a month’s time, the startup has acquired more than 4,000 users, according to Coyle and Zavaladia. Not overly impressive numbers, and more interesting, perhaps, is that a significant subset of users are openly sharing their scores via Facebook or Twitter and helping to bring in new members — 20% of new users sign-up through this network effect.
In the product pipeline are new features that could better drive home the utility of the service. A premium version is slated for early April release and should offer the full breadth of everything that MyWebCareer evaluates for a small monthly or yearly fee.
Also in the works is an enterprise version that will allow employers to evaluate content without giving them direct access to a candidate’s Facebook or LinkedIn profile, says Coyle and Zalavadia. This will eventually be positioned as a recruitment tool that employers can use to discover potential talent with high Career Scores in certain industries.
So long as MyWebCareer can figure out what their score really means, it could have bright future. Employers are socially screening candidates and employees are more likely than ever to have blemished online records, so there is an audience for the product.

O’Reilly Reveals Preview for Its First Book on Node.js

Up and Running With Node, an as-yet-unpublished tome on Node.js, is available as an online preview for all interested parties — especially helpful and constructive commenters.
O’Reilly Media’s first “animal book” on the increasingly popular framework Node.js should be hitting store shelves sometime this summer. What you can see now is author Tom Hughes-Croucher’s text, images and code samples, all of which are currently open for comments.
As Hughes-Croucher writes in the Author’s Note for the preview, “What you’ll find within this first release is not necessarily the final work that we will publish. We hope by making this book available as it’s written we’ll get your feedback, ideas and thoughts on what I’ve already written and what else we should be covering.”
Node.js is rapidly evolving — almost too rapidly for the printed page to keep pace — so Hughes-Croucher, who is also a Node core contributor, is doing all he can to ensure the book is, at press time, current with the available versions of Node.
As O’Reilly describes it, “This book introduces you to Node, the new web development framework written in JavaScript. You’ll learn hands-on how Node makes life easier for experienced JavaScript developers: not only can you work on the front end and back end in the same language, you’ll also have more flexibility in choosing how to divide application logic between client and server.
“Node is already winning the hearts and minds of many companies, including Google and Yahoo. This book shows you why.”
Among other things, the book attempts to teach devs about Node’s approach to event-driven programming and its support for databases and data storage tools. Readers will also find best practices for the still-nascent framework and get examples of how to use the APIs.
Node has also captured the imaginations of many of the developers we talk to on a regular basis; we’re excited to see what Hughes-Croucher is bringing to the table.
The author told us via e-mail that he’ll be updating the preview every two weeks. Anyone can read and comment on the book until it’s published.
And if you already know you’re going to want a hard copy, it’s available for pre-order for $34.99.

Bing Launches Daily Deals Aggregator

As daily deal sites, apps and newsletters proliferate (in fact, The New York Times revealed its high-end version Wednesday), the need for a tool to aggregate and present those deals in a meaningful way for consumers has become apparent.
Enter Bing, which Thursday launched a web-based platform called Bing Deals that collects and organizes deals from top providers such as Groupon, LivingSocial and Restaurant.com.
To access Bing Deals on your iPhone or Android (somewhat amusingly, Windows 7 users can’t access the feature), simply point your browser to m.bing.com, select “deals” from the main menu and specify your location to pull up deals. You can sort deals by their proximity or category or by search.
For reasons beyond us, this same service isn’t extended to desktop search. If you search for the name of a business, a green Deals icon will appear with a link to further information, but it’s not possible to browse for deals in the same way, as far as we’re aware.
To learn more, check out the video above, and see Bing’s official announcement. In the meantime, we’d like to know: How do you keep or plan to keep track of the multitude of daily deal offers?

Restaurant Ratings Made on Google Maps for Android Now Shared on Twitter

Restaurant ratings and reviews you make on Google Maps for Android will now be broadcast on Twitter.
The feature, announced Thursday on the company’s blog, comes as Google Latitude also added new functionality that lets you ping friends you see at nearby places instead of calling them.
Google added a feature to Maps for Android in October that let users read “reviews from around the web” and “reviews from Google users,” just like on the desktop version. Before the announcement today, Maps for Android users’ reviews had previously wound up in Google search results and on Google Hotpot, Google’s Yelp-like rating system, and on Places.
The addition of Twitter is Google’s latest attempt to make further inroads into social media. Hotpot today is a Promoted Trend on Twitter. “We wanted you to be able to share your recommendations even more broadly,” Adam Connors of Google Maps for mobile’s team wrote.
Meanwhile, users who check in using Google Latitude will now be able to ping their friends if they show up nearby. (See picture below.) Such users will “receive an Android notification from you asking them to check in at a place. And when they check in using your request, you’ll get a notification right back so you know which place to go to meet up with them,” Connors writes.

Facebook Now Valued at $65 Billion [REPORT]

Facebook has jumped in value from $50 billion to $65 billion, based on a new investment stake.
A report on CNBC states that General Atlantic is buying 0.1% of the company. Facebook’s new valuation is based on the value of that stake, according to the article, which cites “people with knowledge of the transaction.”
The deal has not been closed and required buying roughly 2.5 million shares from former Facebook employees.
In early January, reports made the rounds that Facebook was worth $50 billion after Goldman Sachs and Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies invested $50 million in the company.
General Atlantic’s other investments include Gilt Groupe and Alibaba.

Google Fixes Problem With Missing 150,000 Gmail Accounts

The problem with those 150,000 missing Gmail accounts “should be resolved,” according to Google.
Last Sunday morning, about 0.08% of all Gmail users were in for a rude awakening. Their e-mail accounts seem to have vanished overnight.
The next day, Google dutifully apologized, promising a quick fix for the problem, saying it might need to restore the missing accounts by retrieving them from off-line backup tapes. “Sorry again for the scare,” said Google’s Ben Traynor.
Making steady progress with the cleanup (hopefully not using any of that Gmail soap in the graphic above), four days later Google says the problem “should be resolved.” The word “should” is slightly unsettling, isn’t it? Here’s a blockquote from the Gmail area of Google’s Apps Status Dashboard:

12:51 AM [3/3/2011]: The problem with Google Mail should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.
Gmail should be back to normal for the vast majority of people affected by this issue. If you are still experiencing an issue, please contact us at gmail-maintenance@google.com. Thanks again for bearing with us.

Let us know in the comments about your experience with this outage. Is everything back to normal yet? Did this incident change your thinking about cloud computing?

Motorola XOOM Review

Motorola’s big launch of CES 2011 and the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet on the market, the Motorola XOOM has a lot to live up to. In its haste to reach Verizon shelves, the XOOM could seem a little half-baked; it doesn’t get Flash Player support for another few weeks, and won’t have 4G until an update sometime in Q2. Still, as the iPad has shown, there are undoubtedly benefits to being first out of the gate, and there’s undoubtedly plenty on offer. Can the XOOM bypass pricing skepticism? Check out the full SlashGear review after the cut.

 

Android Honeycomb Review

Google doesn’t mince its words: the search giant told us that smartphone versions of Android weren’t ready for tablets, and that we should wait for its slate-specific build, and boy have they delivered. Android 3.0 Honeycomb marks a significant shift from the Android 2.x we’re familiar with on handsets, with a refreshed UI and functionality to make the most of tablets’ expansive touchscreens. It debuts on the Motorola XOOM but we’re already expecting it on the imminent Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and LG G-Slate; check out the full Android 3.0 Honeycomb review after the cut.

 

MacBook Pro 15-inch Review (early 2011)

Apple’s MacBook Pro refresh last week didn’t get a press event with huge fanfare, but it’s arguably the most important update to the notebook range in some time. Bringing in Intel’s 2011 Core processor range across the board, and spicing up the larger models with AMD discrete graphics, the new versions may look the same but they promise a huge leap in performance. The high-end 15-inch MacBook Pro arrived on the SlashGear test bench last Thursday and we’ve been putting it through its paces ever since. Could this really be the best notebook around? Check out the full review after the cut.

 

Notion Ink boosts aftersales support & begins Honeycomb transition

It’s been a while since we’ve heard anything official out of Notion Ink, but according to CEO Rohan Shravan there’s been plenty going on in the background besides the second batch of Adam tablets shipping out. Perhaps the most immediate change is a boost in support team staffing, which now apparently outnumbers the developer team, and which should hopefully address some of the ongoing aftersales concerns. Meanwhile, Shravan says the company is in the process of closing another round of funding.


The details of that funding haven’t been revealed, but Shravan claims “major operational change” is afoot with a number of new management employees brought in. There are also plans to establish sales and support centers in Germany, India and – first off – the US.
Behind the scenes, Eden has been ported to Android 3.0 Honeycomb, and Notion Ink’s developer team has turned to gaming; the design/UI/animation department has also been enlarged, and there’s an official release of QuckOffice for Adam. Books for Adam is also on the way, from a third-party provider, though will require a facelift to suit Honeycomb. No word on when we can expect the tablet-centric OS to be released, however.

Motorola XOOM 3G and WiFi pre-orders open; Ships in UK April 9

Pre-orders for the Motorola XOOM in both 3G and WiFi-only versions have begun in the UK, with the WiFi version expected to ship on April 9 2011. Having been priced yesterday, the XOOM WiFi has now got a shipping date; retailer PC World claims that “if you order from us today you’ll be the first in Europe to receive one.”


Meanwhile, Carphone Warehouse has put up an order page of its own for the Motorola XOOM 3G, priced at £599.99 for the unlocked, contract-free version of the Honeycomb slate. That’s a £100 premium for the 3G modem; the XOOM 3G is also listed as currently out of stock – the retailer still says it will ship in April – but we’re guessing carrier subsidies might be available closer to launch.
The April date means that the XOOM will follow almost two weeks after Apple’s iPad 2 goes on sale in Europe, which is expected on March 25. More on the XOOM in our full review.

iPad 2 Browser Benchmarks

The iPad 2, Steve Jobs took to the stage to tell us, offers twice the performance of the original iPad and 9x the graphics performance, thanks to its dual-core 1GHz Apple A5 processor. Still, what does that mean for daily use? Considering most people spend their time on tablets browsing, we ran some side-by-side SunSpider benchmarking on Apple’s old and new iPads to see how the new model shaped up. Check out the results after the cut.


SunSpider, for those unfamiliar, tests core JavaScript performance with a variety of tasks intended to replicate real-world behaviors. So, it generates a tagcloud from JSON input, a 3D raytracer, performs cryptography tests and code decompression, and other tasks that might be encountered in everyday browsing.
In SunSpider, a lower score is better, and the iPad 2 proved more than 4x as fast as the iPad overall. The original tablet scored 8594.9ms, while the iPad 2 managed 2121.7ms. Among the individual benchmarks the iPad 2 scored 263.4ms in 3D testing (vs 1202.2ms), 265.0ms in access (vs 1247.1ms), and 142.8ms in cryptography (vs 572.7ms).
Now, there’s more to browsing than just JavaScript of course, but this is a pretty first fantastic showing from the new Apple slate.
Click the image below for the full-sized results; the iPad 2 is on the left, the iPad on the right.

Why Do Most Televisions Fall Short of Expectations?

If you’re anything like me, you spend quite a bit of time at Best Buy looking at the televisions. You don’t necessarily want to buy one of them, but you’re interested in the changes that are going on in the marketplace. And you want to see what makes some sets so special.




The only issue is, after that evaluation, you quickly realize that the vast majority of the televisions on store shelves just aren’t all that appealing. And even those companies that typically deliver outstanding televisions are offering so many different models that trying to determine what’s really best for you can be difficult.
Consider this: Vizio makes some solid televisions that are arguably more affordable than any other brand’s sets. The only issue is, not all Vizio models are made equal. The company’s 3SV and 4SV models are quite nice, and they deliver a level of quality that customers would expect. But Vizio sells several other televisions. And in my experience, they don’t necessarily stand up to some of its better offerings.
Then we have companies like Samsung. That firm delivers outstanding sets, like the 8000 and 9000 series, but they’re wildly expensive. And those who want the Vizio price with Samsung quality won’t find it.
Panasonic offers the best plasma panels in the television market. And for the most part, its pricing is quite good. But it offers so many different models that choosing between them isn’t always easy. Sure, the VT25 series is nice, but what about the G25 or the S2 series? And how do the company’s LCDs stack up? It’s not as easy to buy a Panasonic television as some think.
And as for the countless other television makers? It’s a mixed bag. Some televisions are nice, others are abysmal. Some folks can’t stand the thought of not getting an LG television, while others balk at the idea. Sony sets are favorites among some customers and downright despised by others.
When we take all this into account, one issue should become abundantly clear to all of us: when it comes to buying televisions, there are few sets that really deliver the full value proposition that we require. And if percentage-chance is our guide, the uninformed customer will more times than not choose a television that they’re unhappy with after they get it home.
So, how do we get out of this trap?
First off, we need to change our buying habits. We need to be more informed. And we need to have an idea of which television model we want to buy before we head to the store.
For me, the perfect television is affordable, has a high-quality picture, and delivers some extra features, like Netflix (and even 3D if the price is right) built in. It has a nice design and its footprint isn’t so large that it looks like a boulder hanging from my wall. It’s a high-quality television at a price that I can justify. And it will last long enough for me to not feel that it’s obsolete a month after purchase.
Luckily, there are some televisions on the market this very minute that can deliver all that for me. But they’re few and far between. And unless I’m prepared, I could get caught with a very, very expensive lemon.
Unfortunately, that’s the reality of the television market today. And by the look of things, I doubt it will change anytime soon.

Zimbabwe face NZ on March 4

New Zealand Vs Zimbabwe
Starting time: 9:30 am IST
Venue: Ahmedabad


Ahmedabad, March 3: The Kiwis and the Zimbabweans are evenly placed in the tournament so far. They have both inflicted big wins against minnow teams and have each lost, rather emphatically, to Australia. New Zealand thumped Kenya by 10 wickets with 42 overs to spare while losing to Australia by 7 wickets with 96 balls left. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe, lost to the Aussies by 91 runs and steamrolled Canada by 175. So March 4, 2011 will mark an intriguing encounter to see which of these two sides will improve their standing in Group A.

NZ leads Zimbabwe by 19 wins to 7 in the head-to-head, most of Zimbabweans wins coming in the period between 1997 and 2001 when the side was arguably at the height of its powers. Since then it has been vastly depleted of talent and experience and relegated to the status of a minnow, while the Kiwis still constitute a top-bracket team. However, it has been a while since these two teams last faced off in a one-day encounter, the date of such falling as far back as Aug 31, 2005. Since then, the teams have seen pretty dramatic upheavals in terms of team composition. In the Zimbabwean side, just Brendon Taylor, Tatenda Taibu, Charles Coventry and Prosper Utseya remain, while for the Kiwis, Jacob Oram, Brendon McCullum and Daniel Vettori are the surviving veterans.

So, who will be the key men in Friday morning's encounter? Going by the statistics of the tournament so far, Nathan McCullum emerges the most successful Kiwi batsman with a lone innings of 52 against the Aussies, followed by Martin Guptill who has an average of 49 and Daniel Vettori with 44, followed by Brendon McCullum with 42.

The Kiwis pacemen too have been fairly impressive with Hamish Bennett coming out tops. He has taken 6 wickets from the two matches New Zealand has played, at an average of 13.16 while Tim Southee has managed 4 scalps at 14.50. So the performance of these seamers will be crucial to the Kiwis' fortunes.

Zimbabwe's strong point is their middle and latter order. Tatenda Taibu has notched up a robust average of 52.50 from 2 matches, while Craig Erwine has 42.50. Then Sean Williams, Prosper Utseya and Graeme Cremer have manoeuvered a collective average of nearly 80 runs, whiich could come in very handy in the latter overs.

However, Zimbabwe's primary area of concern will be their openers with Taylor averaging just 8 from 2 matches and Coventry, 9.00. Their spinners will of course be expected to spearhead the attack, lead by Ray Price who has taken 4 wickets at an average of 14.75.

So will the spin of Zimbabwe bamboozle the Kiwis or will the latter's pace prevail?

Stunning Canada keep Pakistan to 184

Colombo, March 3: The minnows are not done with this World Cup yet. It was either a case of gross complacency by the Pakistanis or a brilliant performance by Canada with the ball and the field which saw the Mapleleafs bowl out the top-dogs for a meagre 184 in 43 overs, in their Group A match in Colombo.

Harvir Baidwan led the attack with 3/35 while Rizwan Cheema, Balaji Rao and Jimmy Hansra each took 2 wickets. The only Pakistan batsmen that notched up decent scores were Misbah-ul-Haq with 37 and Umar Akmal with 48.
Mohammad Hafeez tried to get Pakistan off to a forceful start, striking Henry Osinde for 2 consecutive fours in the 2nd over. But in a dramatic turn, the same bowler got his revenge two overs later, trapping Hafeez in front for 11 off 12 balls. Pakistan were 16/1 in 3.1 overs.

Then just 18 runs later, Shehzad holed out to Gordon off Harvir Baidwan for 12 off 23 balls as Pakistan slipped to 38/2 in 8.5 overs. Baidwan struck again in the 13th over when he trapped Younis Khan for 6 off 13 balls. Just three overs later, Kamran Akmal joined him back in the shed when he cut Rizwan Cheema straight into the palms of the fielder at backward of point.

Then Misbah-ul-Haq and Umar Akmal tried to steady the ship. They took Pakistan past 100/4 in the 26th over and pressed on. But just when it looked like they had settled into a steady stand, leg-spinner Balaji Rao got the breakthough when he trapped Akmal in front for 48 off 68 balls.

Captain Shahid Afridi settled in by striking two fours off Baidwan in the 36th over, to make the score 150/5. Balaji then had Misbah caught down the leg-side for 37 off 68 as Pakistan was tottering on 165/6.

Cheema then removed Afridi by getting him caught at point for 20 off 17 balls. In the very next over, Jimmy Hansra dismissed Abdul Razzaq lbw, for 8 and Pakistan were 181/8. In the same over, the bowler had Wahab Riaz caught for a duck. Finally, at the end of the 43rd over, Baidwan bowled Saeed Ajmal for a duck as well, as Pakistan folded for 184.

Thumbs-Up For Hammers' Olympic Stadium Bid

The Government and the Mayor of London have approved West Ham's bid to take over the Olympic Stadium after the 2012 Games.

The Olympic Park Legacy Company (OPLC) had unanimously recommended the joint bid by West Ham and Newham Council over proposals by Premier League rivals Tottenham.

Local Government minister Bob Neill confirmed he and Sports Minister Hugh Robertson had both given the recommendation the 'thumbs up'.
Mr Neill said: "This completes the first stage of this process and means that the Olympic Park Legacy Company are now able to enter into negotiations to agree a lease
for the Olympic Stadium site.
"We are delighted with the progress that has been made and very pleased we have reached this very significant milestone in determining the long-term legacy for the Olympic Park."
London Mayor Boris Johnson said the decision would prevent the £537m venue in Stratford, east London from becoming "a dust bowl".
"I am confident that West Ham will provide a secure future for the stadium which also sees its iconic design for the London Games retained for future generations to admire," he said.
"Just two years ago it faced the prospect of becoming a dust bowl staging occasional athletics events but now we can look forward to a fantastic multi-use venue at the heart of the community."
Together with Newham Council, West Ham intend to convert the 80,000-seater stadium into a 60,000-capacity facility with an athletics track.
The club plans to move from its current home at Upton Park in 2014/15 after spending around £95m remodelling the stadium.
Its bid was recommended by the OPLC after an increasingly bitter contest with north Londoners Spurs.
The OPLC will now negotiate a "mutually acceptable lease" with the club and Newham - but warns "other options will be considered" if they are unable to reach a deal.
Tottenham's plans, part of a joint bid with the AEG sport and entertainment group, had been to create a football-only stadium with Crystal Palace being redeveloped for athletics.

O2 confirms it will not sell Apple iPad 2

O2 has said in a surprise announcement that it will not be stocking the iPad 2 when it launches in the UK on 25 March.

A spokesperson explained that O2 will not offer the device directly, but that customers can use the firm's pay-as-you-go deals for the tablet.

"Customers using mobile broadband on O2 tell us that they value freedom and flexibility with their tablet devices, especially when they don't initially know how much mobile data they will need," the spokesperson said.
"We are continuing to offer iPad customers our O2 Pay & Go Mobile Broadband for iPad tariffs. These are directly integrated into iPad 2, and offer flexible payment options and the best browsing experience."
O2 also said that customers using the iPad 2 will be able to access thousands of free Wi-Fi hotspots from The Cloud and BT Openzone, as well as its own hotspots due to go live this year.
Meanwhile, an official T-Mobile Twitter account has confirmed that T-Mobile and Orange will offer the iPad 2 from the launch date.
V3.co.uk emailed Everything Everywhere to get pricing information, but the firm told us that "more details will be announced in due course".
Three said it had no comment on whether it would be stocking the much sought after device while Vodafone had not responded at the time of publication.
The iPad 2 was announced on Wednesday by Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, and boasts a faster processor, thinner design and front and back video cameras.
Apple claimed that the new model delivers twice the CPU performance and up to nine times the graphics performance of the original iPad.

Apple iPad 2 and tablet demand harming HDD shipments

The increasing popularity of solid state disk-based tablet devices will contribute to a four per cent decline in hard disk drive (HDD) shipments in the first quarter of 2011, according to the latest stats from market research firm IHS iSuppli. 

HDD shipments in Q1 are expected to reach 160.9 million units, down from 167.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The market research firm is warning that tablet demand will have an increasingly serious impact on the HDD market, as they cannibalise sales of netbooks.
Declines will occur in four of the six main segments driving demand for HDDs, namely desktop PCs, notebook PCs, netbook PCs and consumer electronics, according to the research.
This will ultimately reduce shipments of HDDs despite a slight increase in demand in the enterprise business and entry server segments.
The first quarter is also a traditionally slow time of year, compounded by the oversupply of six to eight million drives left over from the previous quarter, said iSuppli.
Western Digital remains the market leader among HDD makers, shipping 52.2 million units compared to 48.9 million for Seagate and 30.3 million for Hitachi Global Storage.
The arrival of the Apple iPad 2 this week, however, and a slew of Android tablet devices demonstrated at Mobile World Congress set to launch in the next few months, will keep HDD makers worried.

Seven things you should never do on Facebook

Millions of people are connected online with Facebook, but are you sharing too much? Here are seven things you shouldn't do on the site, regardless of how keen you are on socialising online. 

1) Never settle for the default settings

The people behind Facebook are keen for you to share your details with the world. The more you share, the more people you connect to, the more people want to sign up. However, sharing everything with all and sundry isn't a good idea. To check and opt out of the recommended settings, open your Facebook page, click on 'Account' in the top right of the screen and then 'Privacy settings'.
The 'Recommended settings' mean that your status, photo, posts, bio, favourite quotation, family and relationship details are shared with everyone. Photos and videos you're tagged in, religious and political views and birthdays are shared with Friends of friends. Permission to comment on your posts, places you check in to, and contact information are shared with Friends only.
Change all to Friends only, and you're safe from the prying world.
2) Never agree to have yourself listed on search engines
Telling your Facebook mates what's going on in your life is one thing, but letting any old Tom, Dick or Harriet see your Facebook page via a web search is another.We would recommend opting to never have your Facebook details shared with other search engines.
To make sure you aren't go to your Facebook page, 'Account', 'Privacy Settings', 'Apps and websites', then 'Public Search'. De-tick the 'Enable Public Search' button.
3) Never put your address and phone number on Facebook
Unless you want app developers knowing where you live and how to contact you we wouldn't recommend putting any real details in to Facebook for the time being. That means no home address and no phone number.
4) Never let apps lie dormant
One for the advanced Facebook user: Never let an app continue to suck your information once you've done with it.Remember the days when you played Zombies or maybe Vampires? Well those apps are most likely still active on your account and sucking in your personal data. Scary, huh?
Nip over to your Facebook page, go to 'Account', 'Privacy Setting' and then 'Apps, games and websites', and remove the ones you don't want.
5) Never let your mum see your tagged photos
You've had one too many drinks and been tagged for all your friends, colleagues and family to see you not looking too hot. Not good. To avoid this, go to your Facebook page, 'Account', 'Privacy Settings', and make sure Photos and videos you're tagged in is set to Friends only.
Taking this to the next level, you can also block individual people on top of those groups of people. Go to 'Customise settings', 'Photos and videos I'm tagged in' and chose to edit settings. Here from the drop-down menu chose 'customise' again and then start listing the people you want to hide your photos from.
6) Never give out your date of birth
What's one of the first security questions you are ever asked when you deal with your bank? What's your date of birth? And yet here you are giving it away on your Facebook page for all to see. You should never let people see the year you were born.
Go to your Facebook page, 'Profile', then 'Edit profile'. In the first pane ('Basic information') chose as to whether you want to 'Show my full date of birth in my Profile', 'Show only day and month in my Profile' or 'Don't show my birthday in my profile'. If you still want birthday wishes go for the second option.
7) Never broadcast that you're going on holiday
Always be careful about what you say on your status updates and never give out any personal information that you don't want getting into the wrong hands.
Burglars prey on stuff like the fact that you've gone on holiday and left the keys under the flowerpot near the front door and the combination to the safe is...

Firms blocking Web sales limit competition -EU court

A corporate policy of blocking sales over the Internet is "disproportionate," Europe's highest court wrote in an opinion on Thursday, a view that could have wide ramifications for how consumer products are sold. Skip related content

"In the opinion of Advocate General (Jan) Mazak, cosmetic company Pierre-Fabre's absolute refusal to allow its French distributors to sell its products on the Internet appears to be disproportionate," the European Court of Justice said in a statement.

"An absolute ban on selling via the Internet, in the context of a selective distribution network which goes beyond what is objectively necessary in order to distribute goods in an appropriate manner in light of their material qualities, aura and image, has the object of restricting competition," it said.
While only an opinion at this stage, the opinions of advocates-general of the European Court of Justice are upheld by the court rulings in more than 80 percent of cases.

The devices we need to take augmented reality further

Welcome again to AR Week here on Pocket-lint. 

 

If you haven't already had your mind blown as to the future that augmented reality can bring us, then you've got a little catch up reading to do but, don't worry, there's a wealth of articles from us yet to come.For the moment though consumer AR is somewhat stuck at the level of holding your phone out in front of you to get some guidance on where your nearest train station is - something that could arguably be done on a standard map. So, what is it that's going to take us from A to B? How are we going to get to that instant, seamless, information-fuelled future? Well, here are some of the key devices that will shoot augmented reality up to the next level. Oh, and if you're still not sure what AR is all about, then that link should bring you nicely up to speed and without too many long words either.

AR glasses
The next big step for augmented reality is to get right up in our faces and at all times too. There's a number of innate issues of having to use your mobile phone as the AR window on the world. Holding the thing at arms length in front of you is tiring, it looks a little silly, it rather invites having your phone taken off you and there's an excellent chance of swinging round and accidentally punching someone in the face. There's also quite a few AR tasks out there such as performing maintainance and repairs that are going to need you to have your hands free - all what many might class as "barriers" to AR getting much further.Possibly, worse than all of those is the fact that the view which you get through your smartphone camera isn't a proper 1:1 picture of what's going on. Unlike all the nice adverts for Layar and Wikitude, your display doesn't fit in precisely with the world around you with just a neat area framed off but otherwise in synch with the scale that you see; and that's an issue when you're trying to navigate and get the real to line up satisfactorily with the virtual as you move the phone about. All of these issues can be fixed by doing all the display work through a pair of AR glasses instead.
Fortunately, there are plenty of companies working on such a solution as we speak. Vuzix are the ones that most will have heard of and probably the only manufacturer out there at the moment offering a version of this kind of hardware for anything like consumer prices. The Vuzix Wrap 920AR glasses capture the world through twin cameras on the front of the lenses which broadcast a live signal of the world around you onto mini screens right in front of your eyes, which are the equivalent size of a 67-inch TV as seen from 3m away and with VGA resolution.The idea is that you plug them in to your computer and they can make whatever virtual model or object you're looking at appear on top of a real world surface such as your desk, and because they work with a different screen in front of each eye, it's easy enough to make the object 3D as well. The trouble with them is that they're not mobile enough, they're still rather chunky and unsightly and they also happen to cost around £1,499. That said, the head tracking is solid and they definitely work.A step up from this AV Walker system as shown off in October 2010 at Ceatac in Japan. The system, as designed in partnership by Olympus and phone maker NTT Docomo, allows the user to see the real world without running the feed through a camera and video display. It's a genuine real aspect through a pair of normal glasses weighing just 20g. The only difference is that mounted to one of the lenses is a tiny projector which projects the virtual, computer generated information directly to the peripheral vision of one of the user's eyes. Look to the sides and the software will show you what shops are around you. Look up and you'll get the weather. Look straight ahead and the application will revert to navigation mode and show you which way you need to travel.The glasses and projector are connected to a smartphone which does all of the computational and graphics work. It also provides the GPS location while adjusting the images according to the head tracking inputs received through the glasses to detect the motion of the user. It still has to rely on the rather rudimentary mobile phone based geo-techniques, without using any actual live recognition of the real world around you, but it's a decent step forward and an interesting demonstration nonetheless.
French company Laster, in partnership with an assortment of research centres and optical institutes across the country and other parts of Europe, has a product already working in the professional world with a system that can recognise its surroundings. The patented Enhanced View technology works by having a pair of see-through glasses with a tiny camera placed on the bridge. It can then send the visual camera information wirelessly back down to whatever device is running the application - mobile phone, pda, laptop, games console, portable DVD player - which can in turn project the correct graphics lined up properly on your visual field courtesy of two pic projectors in the arms of the glasses which display the virutal images at up to 600x800 resolution onto the backs semi-reflective lenses. The whole image is effectively the size of an 88-inch screen as seen from 3 metres and it can overlay text, images and video.Speaking to Laster, the company expects to be launching a version of the glasses into the consumer market in March 2011 with a product priced between £600-800. The hope is to have something with a complete field of view, with a better weight and ergonomics and at an affordable price point in 2 to 3 years time. Exciting and ambitious stuff.

AR contact lens
The next step from the AR glasses has to be AR contact lenses and, as fantastical as it sounds, there is a team at the University of Washington who have a prototype already. Led by professor Babak Parviz, the group has managed to augment a standard polymer-based contact lens with ultra-thin metal circuitry consisting of components at around one thousandth of the thickness of a human hair, and it didn't seem to bother the rabbits who wore them for the 20-minute trials.The lens houses basic wiring as well as a single red LED and an antenna ready for wireless communication with whatever device is set to be running the AR application. What's quite astounding is some of the challenges the team overcame including the tricky problem of how to get the metal components to adhere correctly to a polymer surface - materials that are notoriously tricky to match together. Parviz and co have come up with a system of micro-fabrication which means that the components self assemble, once in the eye, by floating into specific receptor sites on the surface of the lens via a system of capillary action - the same as plants use to draw up water from soil.Sadly, the problems don't end here. The lens in the test was not actually switched on because there are some pretty huge issues which lie ahead. First of all, there's one of safety. If people have problems with the radiation from even a mobile phone's antenna when held at the side of your head or sitting in your pocket, then how about the dangers when one is put right onto the thin surface of your eye? What's more, a working AR lens is going to heat up and if it gets much hotter than 44 degrees centigrade, that's going to start burning the surface of the cornea. Not very nice.
The bigger challenges are the ones of functionality. The human eye is used to resolving a sharp image at a comfortable minimal distance of around 25cm. So, how do you produce a picture right on the surface of the eye? The suggested approach is to adjust the angle of the incoming light from the LEDs so that the image focuses through the human lens behind the cornea and directly onto the retina. Of course, that's all very well in theory but it's going to take human testing to get that one right. A rabbit isn't going to tell them when the LEDs look sharp.Powering the lens is also an area the Washington team has to work on. It looks like the best method is going to be harvesting ambient radio frequencies although perhaps using the heat and movement of the human eye as well as the possibility of wireless power could help out.. Finally, there are the problems for the user of being able to see through all the gubbins to the real world, but Parviz is confident that there is enough space around the periphery of the contact lens to house the circuitry so as not to get in the way of what the eye is trying to see. It's also going to be important from the point of view of others as well. At the moment, it's very clear to see that someone is wearing a bionic lens; and for this kind of thing to take off, the public needs to accept it which is going to be about it not looking too weird. All quite a challenge, so don't expect to get fitted for an AR contact lens for a good 30 years or more.
SixthSense
Far less invasive than something like a contact lens and more achievable in a shorter scale of time than AR glasses is something like the interactive projector system as invented by Pranav Mistry, a Phd student at MIT. Called SixthSense, the set up consists of an apparatus worn rather like a medallion that connects to an application on a mobile phone which takes care of all the computational and graphical tasks.A camera facing forward at the top of the array takes in information of what's in front of the user and most of the time is concerned specifically with an area as projected by a pico projector also hung around the user's neck. The user can interact with the projection which is displayed on whatever surface is in front of them with a number of gestures as dictated by the thumb and forefinger of both hands. These digits are capped by coloured markers which the SixthSense camera can recognise and pass back to the mobile phone for the application to then perform whatever task has been demanded.The best way of getting an idea of what it's all about and precisely what kinds of tasks it can help with is by watching the video demonstration below. It's 8 minutes long but well worth it, and if you haven't seen it before, we do guarantee a small thunk as your jaw hits your desk.

Whether it's for photos, looking up information on products or for social interaction, there's definitely a very near future for this kind of technology, and, even though it's the largest and most obvious of all the AR devices so far, it's very easy to see how it sits more easily into our social expectations. We already adorn ourselves with necklaces and it's not a large step to see how the SixthSense can be housed in a more fashionable item or reduced to something small enough to be sewn into a garment. What's more, one could imagine having four brightly coloured finger nails actually looking stylish cool and actually very future normal.Perhaps the only draw-backs are the projector itself and the power of the recognition software. Pico projectors currently tend not to be that bright and are always going to be limited to be able to throw out a certain volume of display and only at a certain range of distance. Out in bright sunlight, one might have a few issues. Naturally, these things are only relatively new and doubtless the picos will come on leaps and bounds if needed.

Smartphones
Yes, we have these already and a very good thing too. It's all very well doing AR parlour tricks with your computer and webcam but if we're going to get this burgeoning technology really going, we need mobile computers to run those applications. Fortunately, smartphones are just the ticket and with every year they become more and more perfect for the job.The arrival of Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoC solution and now with the likes of the dual-core Tegra 2 set ups, mobile phones are more than capable of any computational and graphical tasks that augmented reality on the go requires. Throw into that 3G coverage becoming much better along with the development of 4G solutions and the connectivity to get all the information required to run these tasks from the Internet is also in place.
Where these devices are lacking at the moment is in tracking, geo-location, recognition, in the camera itself - as mentioned earlier - and the age old problem of battery life. There are better gyroscopes and accelerometers and more expensive, surveyor grade GPS software out there, but these kinds of things currently would push the price of such a device up into the tens of thousands of pounds. Fortunately, the likes of Qualcomm and Nokia are working on their chips to make a better job of what resources already lie inside our smartphones and recognition software is on its way to providing real time virtual/actual match-ups.There's still plenty of development to go but the point is that for the while, and into the foreseeable future, it appears to be these devices, or their grandchildren, that will be supply our AR power wherever we go.

Mozilla patches Firefox ahead of Pwn2Own contest

Mozilla has issued a security update for Firefox ahead of the Pwn2Own hacking contest next week. 

The update addresses 10 vulnerabilities in the browser, including eight labelled as 'critical' security risks. If exploited, the flaws could allow an attacker to remotely take control and execute code on a targeted system.

The update patches critical issues in Firefox's JavaScript and JPEG-handling components, as well as memory errors which could be used to trigger a crash.
Such vulnerabilities will be in high demand next week when the CanSecWest security conference kicks off.
The conference will include the annual Pwn2Own contest in which security researchers race to perform exploits on fully patched systems and browsers, Firefox being among the targets.
The Firefox update also patches two lower-risk security flaws, one labelled 'high' risk and another 'moderate'.
Mozilla's update comes on the heels of a similar security update for the Google Chrome browser.
Like Firefox, Chrome will be among the targets for the Pwn2Own contest. In this year's event, Google is offering researchers an additional $20,000 reward for a working Chrome exploit.

How Apple's iPad 2 compares to rivals and iPad 1

Here's how Apple Inc's iPad 2, unveiled on Wednesday, stacks up against competing tablets. 

BY THE NUMBERS:

iPad 2
Price: $499-$829
Has front and rear-facing camera
Sports a magnetic cover
Weight: 1.33 lbs
Height: 9.5 inches
Width: 7.3 inches
Depth: 0.34 inches
Technicals: Runs on 1GHz dual-core A5 processor, iOS 4.3
Available: March 11
iPad - original
Price: $499-$829
Weight: 1.5 lbs
Height: 9.6 inches
Width: 7.5 inches
Depth: 0.5 inches
Technicals: Runs on 1GHz A4 processor
Motorola Mobility Xoom
Price: $600-$799
Available: Since February
Software: Android
Weight: 1.6 lbs
Height: 9.8 inches
Width: 6.6 inches
Depth: 0.5 inches
Tech: Runs on 1GHz Dual Core processor with Android 3.0 Honeycomb
Research In Motion PlayBook
Price: TBA
Available: Probably March
Weight 0.9 lbs
Height 5.1 inches
Width 7.6 inches
Depth 0.4 inches
Tech: Runs on 1 GHz dual-core processor with BlackBerry OS
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1
Price: TBA
Screen: 10.1 inch-display
Weight: 1.3 lbs
Tech: Runs on 1 GHz dual-core processor with Android 3.0 Honeycomb
Available: TBA

UK Airlift For Egyptians Fleeing Libya

Thousands of Egyptians who fled violence in Libya are being taken back to their homeland in an emergency airlift using three British chartered planes.

 

They had made their way to the Libyan-Tunisian border as clashes continued between forces loyal to Colonel Gaddafi and opposition groups.

The UN believes 180,000 people have reached Libya's borders, with almost 80,000 entering Egypt, a similar number in Tunisia and around 30,000 waiting to cross into Tunisia.
Many of them are migrant workers who have suffered reprisals from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's loyalists after being accused of encouraging the anti-government uprising.
Few have been able to travel on to their homes, so tent cities have been spouting up at border posts, amid long queues of refugees seeking food and clean water.
UN spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said "many, many terrified refugees" in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, were too afraid to move for fear they will be targeted.
Ms Fleming added that some waiting at the Tunisian border to cross had been in the queue for as long as three days and that sub-Saharan Africans in particular were not being allowed into Tunisia.
"We're very concerned that racism could be a factor," she said.
"All borders - land, air and sea - should be opened in a non-discriminatory manner. Anyone who needs to flee should be able to flee."
Britain is spending £4m chartering the planes to work around the clock taking Egyptians from Djerba in Tunisia to Cairo.
One of those leaving said: "I felt very, very pleased. At last I will see my family after many days of suffering."
HMS York, which delivered tons of medical aid to Libya's second city of Benghazi, also left with around 60 foreign nationals on board.
The Egyptian military has sent two ships to bring back stranded citizens. Officials say more than 100,000 Egyptians have returned from Libya since the uprising began.
Meanwhile, the US has again warned of the risks of imposing a no-fly zone.
America says no option has been ruled out in dealing with Libya but its Defence Secretary has signalled a cautious approach to imposing flight restrictions.
Robert Gates said there had been "loose talk" about the military options in Libya.
He pointed out that such a zone would require attacks on air defence installations, with the risk of civilian casualties.
Britain was among countries which earlier this week said that the no-fly zone was being considered.
Clashes are continuing between opposition forces, which are thought to control the east of the country, and Gaddafi loyalists as Libya teeters on the brink of civil war.
Air strikes have targeted the airport of the oil terminal town of Brega and a rebel position in the nearby town of Ajdabiyah in the east, a rebel officer said.
Opposition soldiers also said troops loyal to Colonel Gaddafi had been pushed back to Ras Lanuf, home to another major oil terminal and 375 miles east of Tripoli.
It comes a day after government loyalists launched a ground attack on Brega that was repulsed.
Sky's foreign affairs editor Tim Marshall speculated that even though the no-zone appeared to be a non- starter, the rebels could be getting help from outside Libya.
He said: "I think the Egyptians may well be helping the rebels because they have always disliked Gaddafi and they want a good relationship with at least the east of the country.
"If you haven't got air cover and you try to put an army together of the rebels and march on the capital to oust Gaddafi, you will be hit by his air force so you will never make it.
"Gaddafi does not appear to have the strength to put a force together to march 500 miles the other way and retake the major cities. Though, he could probably take some smaller towns near Tripoli.
"Therefore you are in a stalemate, while the two sides perhaps start talking and try to divide the country up.
"It is a negative thing, though, trying to divide the nation up.
"You could see a situation where the country broke apart into two or three bits and that would project instability into the Mediterranean and into Europe. It's still a very delicate situation."
:: Three Dutch marines are being held in Libya after being captured by forces loyal to Gaddafi while trying to rescue two Europeans, a Defence Ministry spokesman said.
The men were captured on Sunday by armed men after they had gone ashore at Sirte with a helicopter from a Dutch naval ship stationed off the coast of Libya to help with evacuations from the North African country.
Click here to see the website for a charity through which money can be donated to help with medical supplies.

B&Q planning £35m website upgrade

Home improvement retailer B&Q is to spend £35 million constructing a "world-class" website as it battles declining sales trends at its stores.

The new digital platform will launch in phases over the next three years, but in 2011 customers will see the start of a transactional site designed for mobile phones, a doubling of products available for next-day delivery as well as further developments to its iPhone app which launched last July.

Euan Sutherland, B&Q's chief executive, said the shopping and customer service experience with B&Q "will be joined up and much improved".
The website drive comes amid expectations that B&Q's UK and Ireland like-for-like sales declined 3% in the year to January this year.
The store chain, which is part of FTSE 100 firm Kingfisher, recently signed up Channel 4's property experts Kirstie Allsopp and George Clarke as ambassadors in a campaign to promote DIY and home improvement and give advice online.
The chain also uses Alan Titchmarsh, who writes a gardening blog on the website, to promote its products.

Secrets behind online security checks

You're just about to buy gig tickets, register a new email account or start writing a blog. Then suddenly you are asked to copy some squiggly characters into a box - why? We explain what these security checks are for and root out one of their more surprising uses. 

 

A CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a simple online test, primarily designed to make sure that you are a human and not a computer. Put simply, computers or robots cannot read these distorted characters, and humans can. But there are other uses too - for example; with every word you type into one of these boxes you are helping to digitise a book or newspaper.

WHY THEY'RE USED
CAPTCHAs are used by a large percentage of websites that require users to input data, therefore making them vulnerable to spam - that could be unsolicited commercial promotion or out and out vandalism. Web editor for Global Cool Chris Deary explains: "Essentially, CAPTCHAs are there to protect the integrity of a website, both in terms of the front end user experience and the back end data that the website collects from its users."
There are three main examples of their uses:
1. Sites like TicketMaster use them to prevent scalpers (online touts) from buying every single ticket available and then selling them at a higher price elsewhere. TicketMaster's Carolyn Simms explains: "With over 80% of our tickets being sold online we use CAPTCHAs to prevent computer programs such as bots accessing our website.
"Bots are designed to purchase large numbers of tickets via simultaneous transactions. Without CAPTCHAs, they can purchase entire sections of tickets in less than a fraction of a second - which goes against our goal of a fair and equitable distribution of tickets to consumers."
2. Free email accounts such as Yahoo!, Hotmail and Gmail use them to prevent spammers gaining millions of accounts to send spam from. Any one account allows its holder around 200 messages a day. Without CAPTCHAs, spammers would have access to millions of accounts and the amount of spam we receive in our inboxes would dramatically increase.
3. Message boards and blogging sites use contact forms that allow visitors to either post comments to the site or send them directly to the web administrators. To prevent a bombardment of spam, many of these sites use CAPTCHAs. They don't stop humans posting offensive comments but they do prevent bots from posting hundreds of spam messages automatically.
GOOD OR BAD?
But CAPTCHAs certainly have their critics. Web editor Chris Deary says: "They are by no means 100 per cent foolproof. The strength of a CAPTCHA depends on the quality of its implementation and some spammers can bypass the weaker ones with character recognition software. Also, many genuine users find them irritating and difficult to read."
Matt Mullenweg founding developer of blogging software WordPress agrees. He says: "CAPTCHAs are bad - they're supposed to tell robots from humans but sometimes it takes me 4-5 tries to decipher one. The world is moving to mobile, and they're even worse there. CAPTCHA is also useless against human spammers, which is a growing percentage of the total."
DIGITISING BOOKS
However Luis von Ahn, founder of reCAPTCHA - a website that uses CAPTCHAs to help digitise books and newspapers - believes they are not only essential to online security, but that the letters we type in have an incredibly useful byproduct. He explains: "About 200 million CAPTCHAs are solved by humans around the world every day. In each case, roughly ten seconds is spent. Individually, that's not a lot of time, but in total these little puzzles consume more than 150,000 hours of work each day. What if we could make positive use of this human effort?
"Companies such as Amazon are trying to digitise old books, which were written before the Internet age, and they do this by scanning. Scanning books is like taking a digital photo of each page and the computer needs to be able to decipher each word.
"A technology called OCR helps to computers to read text. But in books that were written over a hundred years ago, the text has faded. We take those words and get humans to decipher them, via CAPTCHAs - so every time you type in those squiggly letters, you help to digitise books."
"The CAPTCHA is pulling double duty. Not only is it verifying the contents of a digitised book, it's also verifying that the people filling out the form are actually people. In turn, those people are gaining access to a service they want to use." Each new word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is given to a user in conjunction with another word for which the answer is already known. The user is then asked to read both words. If they solve the one for which the answer is known, the system assumes their answer is correct for the new one. The system then gives the new image to a number of other people to determine whether the answer was correct.
While many find CAPTCHAs fiddly and not entirely legible, some Internet users like the challenge. Retired teacher, Nick Clarke says: "Humans are better at the sort of fuzzy logic required to do this, so in fact you get a little boost when they appear - it's a rare confirmation that you can do something that a robot can't."
ReCAPTCHA is currently in use by over 100,000 web sites and is transcribing over 40 million words per day.