TECH INFO: Windows 10 is the official name for Microsoft's next version of Windows

Microsoft officially unveiled the name for the next release of Windows yesterday (30th September 2014): Windows 10. While the software maker had referred to Windows 10 as codename Windows Threshold internally, yesterday’s official naming puts any rumors of Windows, Windows TH, Windows X, Windows One, and even Windows 9 to bed. It’s simply Windows 10, marking a jump from the mixed reception of Windows 8.

A closer look at Windows 10

Described as Microsoft's "most comprehensive platform ever," Windows 10 will offer a tailored experience for all hardware across a single platform family. And developers can build universal apps that will work everywhere. Here's how Microsoft describes its ambitious goal:

Windows 10 will run across an incredibly broad set of devices – from the Internet of Things, to servers in enterprise datacenters worldwide. Some of these devices have 4 inch screens – some have 80 inch screens – and some don’t have screens at all. Some of these devices you hold in your hand, others are ten feet away. Some of these devices you primarily use touch/pen, others mouse/keyboard, others controller/gesture – and some devices can switch between input types.

When you put all that together, the end result looks a lot like Windows 7. That's intentional. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore pointed to the millions of customers still using Windows 7, and said the company wants to make their transition to Windows 10 much more comfortable than the unfamiliar leap to Windows 8 two years ago. "We want all these Windows 7 users to have the sentiment that yesterday they were driving a first-generation Prius, and now with Windows 10 it's like a Tesla."

The new Windows 10 start menu.

"Windows 10 will deliver the right experience on the right device at the right time," said Microsoft's Terry Myerson. "Windows 10 will run on the broadest types of devices ever." You can expect a unique user interface depending on what you're running Windows on; images shown at the event line up with leaks that have surfaced in recent weeks. It's basically a combination of Windows 7 and 8 that borrows design elements from each of Microsoft's two most recent operating systems.

The "Metro" start screen and Microsoft's traditional Start Menu have been combined; no longer is the screen one huge grid of tiles for desktop users. "The tiles and icons that are shown are a blend of classic apps and new universal apps," Belfiore said. But Live Tiles are still here and can be resized to a user's preference. More than anything else, Microsoft is working to make everything feel way more cohesive. "In Windows 8 when users launched a modern app, it sort of had a different environment," Belfiore said. "We don't want that duality. We want users on PCs with mice and keyboards to have their familiar UI."

Windows 10sion: what's old is new again, and that's a problem

There's a new universal search in the start menu that pulls in results from the web, and Microsoft is also talking up its "task view," which helps users master Windows' multitasking features. It looks fairly similar to Expose in OS X and allows users to set up different desktops for work, home, and other usage scenarios, switching apps between them at will. Up to four apps can now be snapped on screen, which also should ramp up Windows 10's multitasking power. Microsoft outright admitted this isn't entirely an earth-shattering addition. But it is intended to speed up your productivity across the entire operating system. "It illustrates for Windows we have to address a breadth of users," Belfiore said, moving on to show a big improvement to the command prompt: it now supports paste.

Windows 10's Task View.

But Microsoft isn't abandoning touch input. Belfiore said the Charms bar from Windows 8 has been carried over to Windows 10 with improvements of its own. "We want to support those Windows 8 users who have touch machines and getting a lot of benefit out of them." For convertible devices like the Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro, Microsoft is adding a new Continuum mode that aims to make the frequent switch between tablet mode and laptop mode more seamless. "What you get is a device that operates with the simplicity of a tablet, but morphs itself back to the familiar PC experience," said Belfiore.

Microsoft will launch a Windows 10 "Insider Program" beginning today (October 1st 2014), which will give its most enthusiastic and vocal users a chance to try out and help shape the new OS before the general public gets it. Windows 10 will launch to consumers everywhere in late 2015. And yesterday was only the beginning; Microsoft says it will unveil much more about the new consumer features of Windows 10 early next year.

"Continuum" view in Windows 10.

SOURCE: The Verge

TECHNOLOGY AND MUCH MORE: TECH INFO: Wearables - What Are They?

TECHNOLOGY AND MUCH MORE: TECH INFO: Wearables - What Are They?: Do you have a device that you wear that measures your physical activity and uploads it to a website where you can compete with friend...

TECH INFO: Wearables - What Are They?

Do you have a device that you wear that measures your physical activity and uploads it to a website where you can compete with friends with badges? How about a watch that lights up when you receive an email, or glasses that are able to search for something online when you tell them to? These are all examples of wearables, which are basically computing devices that you wear somewhere on your body that enhance your access to technology - maps, websites, search engines,apps - in some way.

Examples of wearables

Before going too much further into what wearables are, it's probably important to distinguish what wearables aren't: they are not devices that are implanted in your body, such as a pacemaker or hearing aids. Wearables are devices that have computing architecture built into them, and can be taken on and off. In addition to the examples given above in the first paragraph, here are a few more instances of wearables: 

• GPS assistance that is implanted into sunglasses and gives you turn by turn road navigation 

• Heart rate monitors that tell you when you need to slow down and speed up, saving records in a database you can bring to your next doctor's appointment 

• An alert button that skiers wear clipped to their jacket in case of an avalanche; if they run into trouble, the alert broadcasts their location 

• You've probably also heard of Google Glass, a pair of glasses that allows you to search for anything you need online, monitor your environment, send a message, navigate, and much more. 

In a recent Pew Internet Research study (.PDF), many industry pundits agree that wearables are the natural next iteration of Web ecosystem development, along withaugmented reality and the Internet of Things. Here's what a few of them had to say:

On how wearables and the Web will work together: "...mobile, wearable, and embedded computing will be tied together in the Internet of Things, allowing people and their surroundings to tap into artificial intelligence - enhanced cloud-based information storage and sharing...."The most useful impact is the ability to connect people. From that, everything flows."

How wearables will give us quick feedback on our daily lives, especially in regards to health: "We will grow accustomed to seeing the world through multiple data layers. This will change a lot of social practices, such as dating, job interviewing and professional networking, and gaming, as well as policing and espionage.”

“We may well see wearable devices and/or home and workplace sensors that can help us make ongoing lifestyle changes and provide early detection for disease risks, not just disease. We may literally be able to adjust both medications and lifestyle changes on a day-by-day basis or even an hour-by-hour basis, thus enormously magnifying the effectiveness of an ever more understaffed medical delivery system.”

"The greatest impact will be medical — due to wearable devices and 'telemedicine’ — and more devices will be implanted. It will happen due to fewer doctors, more bandwidth (for those in cities or better off financially) and demand by the public and the interest of younger physicians. The data of the Internet of Things can be beneficial for individuals, especially when our own bodies start telling us things before we have symptoms.”

How wearables and instant access to online services could improve lives:"The most powerful effect embedded/wearable devices and the Internet of Things will have is to free us from technology, 

while allowing us to continue to benefit from it to the same and an even greater degree... It will 

bring scientific advancement through international collaboration; increased constituent voice in 

political discourse; and a freedom from technology devices that will allow our attention to return to more subtle and fundamental aspects of living."

Will privacy be an issue? Potentially, but the tradeoffs are seen as more valuable: "“Privacy issues will be outweighed by the perceived benefits of being online and interacting with others all the time. I see wearable, or even embedded, technology managing even the most mundane aspects of our daily lives, from what we need at the grocery store to when it's time to change A/C filters to scheduling routine medical appointments and tests.”

From futuristic glasses that search the Web on demand to sophisticated smartwatches that do much more than just tell time, wearables are increasingly becoming more integrated into what we tap into online and off. As the Web continues to evolve, we will see wearables become more sophisticated, giving us better access to communication, online services, and everything we access on the World Wide Web.

SOURCE: about.com

C. NEWS: Celebs storm Italy for George Clooney's wedding. Photos from their rehearsal dinner

George Timothy Clooney is an American actor and filmmaker, will be marrying British Human Rights Lawyer Amal Alamuddin today in Venice Italy and many of their celebrity friends including Matt Damon, Cindy Crawford and US Vogue editor Anna Wintour are in Italy to celebrate with them.

Amal stepped out in a beautiful red waterfall dress last night for their rehearsal dinner at the exclusive five-star Belmond Cipriani Hotel on the island of Giudecci. See more photos after the cut...

Source: AFP

New music: Clubstar - Never Die

Love Never Die is a romantic musical with music by Nigerian musician, Clubstar. A love like ours could never die as long as I have you near me. I know this love of mine will never die - Clubstar. Listen to the romantic tune below...

How To Talk On The Phone Like A Human Adult

Talking on the phone is a lost art. No one's really doing it anymore.

If you're under 40, you probably text, email, tweet, Skype, Facetime, "Yo"...anything but phone. If you're under 18, you probably don't even use actual words to communicate -- just tiny cute pictures, emoji, to get your point across.

Even Jeff Bezos, the 50-year-old CEO of Amazon -- which just launched a phone! -- recently admitted he doesn't use a phone. "I haven't made a phone call on my phone in a long time," Bezos told a New York Times reporter.

Still not convinced? Eighty-seven percent of high school seniors surveyed by school review site Niche said they text every day (it's far and away the most popular thing for them to do on their phones) while only 37 percent talk on the phone daily.

Still, sometimes people want to TALK to you. Like, maybe your grandmother or your dad? Or someone who wants to give you a job and pay you "money."

If you don't remember how to speak out loud to humans on the phone, these situations may become overwhelming.

  

"I don't pick up the phone when people call me because I'm anxious someone has died or is terminally ill," Maxwell Strachan, 26, told me via Gchat -- he declined to be interviewed by phone. Strachan, a HuffPost Business editor, said the only reason anyone uses the phone anymore is to break really bad news. "I don't want to have to react to that news in front of people, so I let it ring and hope to get the bad news in a room on my own via text or email."

I want to help Maxwell and others like him. I'm here to offer guidance on Phone Talking 101.

So what makes me, a 24-year-old who works on the Internet and spends her time writing about how to text people GIFs, qualified for this task? I, dear reader, am an only child. I speak to both of my parents on the phone every single day. Every. Single. Day. If you just count my conversations with my parents, I spend -- by a conservative estimate -- 30 minutes a day on the phone. That's 182.5 hours a year. I spend at least one week of the year on the phone.

Here are some things you need to remember when talking on the phone. For those of you uncomfortable with written language we offer a helpful emoji translation:

1. Listen

  

It's hard to know what to do while talking on the phone since you don't have your phone to look at. You may have a computer or iPad, however, and be tempted. Don't do it!

Don't check your email. Don't look at Facebook. Don't go on Twitter. Don't look at your computer at all.

This isn't Skype. When you're talking on the phone, you're not looking at the person you're talking to. Actually, let's be real...when you're on the phone, you're not looking at the video of yourself in the corner of a screen the way you do on Skype.

Odds are, you won't know what to do with your eyes when you're on the phone. Consider looking into a mirror while you talk if it makes you more comfortable. The mirror is the original front-facing camera.

2. Speak

  

It's easy to let your mind wander when you're talking on the phone. When you're texting, you can respond whenever you like. When you're talking on the phone, though, you're expected to reply the moment the other person stops talking. If you're unsure of what to say, you can choose one of these generic phrases:

"Oh, wow."

"Tell me more!"

"That's interesting."

"And then what?"

These phrases should work in most situations.

3. Feel

  

There are no emoji to use while you're speaking out loud. If your friend has a crying kitty face, you'll have to imagine it. One way to determine someone's mood without emoji, video or Snapchat, is to listen to their tone of voice.

Listen to their voice. Does it sound especially high? Are they short of breath? Is their voice cracking? Wimpering? That might mean your friend is crying. Try to pay special attention to a friend who is crying.

Is he or she saying outrageous things in a calm, serious voice? That might be sarcasm! The list of emotions goes on and on. Try to make sure you can identify different emotions before you take a lot of phone calls.

CREDIT: huffingtonpost.com

How The Amazon Rain Forest Contributes To Earth's Atmosphere.

The Amazon Rainforest produces about 20% of the Earth’s oxygen.

The Amazon Rainforest produces 20% of the oxygen in the Earth’s

atmosphere. Spanning across nine countries in South America, it is the

largest rainforest in the world, about 2.3 million square miles (7 million

square kilometers) and represents 50% of the world’s total rainforest

land. The Amazon Rainforest contributes to regulating the temperature of

the Earth by absorbing carbon that is emitted into the atmosphere when

fossil fuels are burned, which is thought by scientists to cause the

average global temperature to increase. If warmer temperatures dry out its

water sources, the rainforest could contribute more carbon to the

atmosphere than it absorbs, as it did during a 2005 drought.

CREDIT: Wisegeek.com

NEWS: Researchers Have Solved A Big Security Problem With Android Apps On Google Play

Security researchers at Columbia University created a tool that can crawl and analyze the Google Play store much like Google crawls and analyzes the web ... with a twist.

Their tool, called PlayDrone, was designed to hack Play and the apps uploaded to it, circumventing the security systems Google put in place to prevent that sort of thing, the researchers revealed in a paper recently published by a prestigious computer analysis society, ACM Sigmetrics.

The goal was to find out what kinds of security problems Android apps tend to have. And, after looking at over 1 million apps between June 2013, and November 2013, they discovered a widespread problem that revealed people's Facebook accounts, as well as others like Twitter, Bitly, Flickr, Foursquare, Linkedin, and Google+. 

App developers were putting their "secret" key information in the app itself. That's like writing your PIN on your ATM card. Or posting your Facebook password on your public Facebook wall. It might be a convenient place to store such info, but not a safe one.

Many developers were even labeling those secret keys with the word "secret" or "private."

To be fair, this problem wasn't caused by Google, but by the app developers who post their apps in Google Play. In fact, the researchers say that Google stopped the problem by using PlayDrone to scan apps and telling developers to remove secret keys when they find them.

The researchers also waited months to publish their research, giving app developers time to fix their apps.

But the scariest part was the type of app that had this problem, and how some dragged their feet to fix it. In some cases the holes were still there after November when they had officially shut down their research project after warning app developers.

The paper explains, "For example, the popular Airbnb application still contained their Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo secret tokens from June 22, 2013 until well past November 11, 2013."

The researchers used that information to "access the email and friends list of Airbnb users." After notifying Facebook, Facebook banned the Airbnb app from using Facebook credentials to let their users log in. "In a matter of hours" after that, Airbnb fixed their Android app.

The good news to take away from all of this, is that Google is getting smarter about enforcing security rules for Android apps.

CREDIT: BI

The Four Types of Friends You Have on Facebook

Your Facebook newsfeed is likely made up of two kinds of people: Those you actually talk to in real life and, well, those you don't.

Through the years, you've probably accumulated a laundry list of "friends" from different stages of your life. Some "friends" you keep around because you want to see what they're up to, others you want to keep in regular contact with and the rest you're just too lazy to "unfriend." (Why do they make that so hard to do?)

After some extensive trolling of my own newsfeed (and talking with others about their social media use), I've come up with four personas that likely make up your Facebook "friend" list.

Hank "The Human Highlight Reel":

Hank lives the life (or so you think). He frequently posts photos to his Facebook page with captions like, "I'm on a boat." Every Saturday, he's doing something crazy with his bros sporting a V-neck -- and Instagramming the crap out of it. He can usually be seen on your Facebook newsfeed bragging about his posh corporate job in [insert big city here].

But, in real life, Hank can barely afford rent for his studio apartment and can't even score a Tinder date. Hank personifies the first type of Facebook friend you most definitely have -- the one who tries to make their life look way better than it really is.

Dave "The Airer of Dirty Laundry":

You were buds with Dave back in high school, but something went way wrong over the years and you just can't put your finger on what that "something" is. Dave is now comic relief on your most insignificant days. You kind of feel bad that it's come to this, but, then again... no, you don't.

That's because Dave posts very personal things, like details about his custody battle or how he can't find a decent job. It's not like you don't feel for the guy, but you just want to shake him through your computer screen for airing his dirty laundry (again) to the Facebook world. That being said, you can't stop watching.

Taylor "Two Face":

Without Facebook, you wouldn't know a single thing about Taylor. Trying to talk to her in public is like pulling teeth. Whether Taylor is a coworker, girlfriend of a friend or that awkward relative, she's the person you avoid in all social situations. I repeat -- all of them.

The thing is, you know all about Taylor -- her review of The Hunger Games, what music she can't stop listening to and her upcoming travel plans (she can be seen posting "32 days until [insert tropical location here]!"). Taylor is outgoing via social media but introverted in everyday life.

Sarah "The Silent Stalker":

You don't "see" Sarah. You don't "hear" Sarah. Frankly, you think that she hasn't logged into Facebook in months. Her profile picture is a shell of her former self. But, the funny thing is that Sarah is actually tuned in to your posts more than all of the others. Sarah knows what bar you were at last Saturday, which high school friends you still hang with and all about your trip a few months ago.

You won't find Sarah in your newsfeed, but she's watching. Sarah is what we call a "silent stalker." She has her Facebook solely to keep an eye on everyone else -- not to share anything about herself.

Then, there's you. You're the type of "friend" we all look forward to seeing in our newsfeed. You'd be in my "Top 8" if that were still a thing.

CREDIT: huffingtonpost.com

How To Really, Really Annoy iPhone Thieves, In 2 Steps.

iPhone thefts are a huge problem, especially in New York City, where more than 40 percent of thefts involve cell phones.

But there are steps you can take to protect your iPhone, or at least really annoy thieves after they steal it.

Yes, it's time for you to set up "Find My iPhone" and its new feature, "Activation Lock." If someone steals your iPhone, and you have Find My iPhone on, the thief will try to turn it off so you can't find your phone. Activation lock prevent this. The thief can't shut off Find My iPhone without putting in your Apple ID and password.

The two features together have been very successful in curtailing iPhone thefts, since thieves are growing wise to the fact that Activation Lock makes it nearly impossible to turn off Find My iPhone, rendering their thievery useless.

Unfortunately, setting up the features is a little confusing, so we've decided to create a step-by-step guide to walk you through it.

1. Get an iCloud account.

You likely already set up iCloud immediately upon purchasing your iPhone, but if you didn't, here's how:

A. Go to Settings, then iCloud.

B. Tap iCloud, and you'll see something like this:

C. Type in your Apple ID and create a password. If you're not sure what your Apple ID is, Apple can help you find or create one.

2. Activate "Find My iPhone."

A. Go to Settings.

B. Tap iCloud.

C. Turn on Find My iPhone. Scroll down and you'll find it. Just swipe the little bar to the right so it turns green, and Find My iPhone is on. You'll see this pop up:

D. Tap "OK." It should look like this when it's turned on:

Now you'll be able to find your iPhone much more easily if it gets lost or stolen. Fortunately iPhone theft is going down, thanks, in part, to Apple implementing Activation Lock around six months ago. You should do your part too.

CREDIT: huffingtonpost.com