One Direction's New You & I Fragrance Pics Will Melt Your Heart

Credit: You & I fragrance

The One Direction band Twitter practically made fans heart stop when they tweeted out a seriously gorgeous photo of Zayn Malik taken during the group's You & I fragrance photo shoot.

Credit: Twitter

 1D previously released swoonworthy pics of the guys against a purple background, but now they're starting to tease us with gorgeous black-and-white pics of the guys showing off their dreamy smiles.

 We hope there's more where the Zayn pic came from!

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Kindle security flaw can be exploited by hidden codes in e-books

Kindle security flaw can be exploited by hidden codes in e-books

Mariella Moon

Engadget

Next time you come across a Kindle e-book link somewhere other than Amazon itself, you may want to make sure it's not some dubious website before you hit download or "Send to Kindle." A security researcher by the name of Benjamin Daniel Musser has discovered that the "Manage Your Kindle" page contains a security hole -- one that hackers can take advantage of with the help of e-books hiding malicious lines of code. Once you load the Kindle Library with a corrupted e-book (typically with a subject that includes ), a hacker gets access to your cookies, and, hence, your Amazon account credentials.

Based on the updates Musser wrote at the bottom of the report's web page, he first discovered the flaw in October last year. Amazon patched it up shortly after he reported it, but it made its way back after a "Manage Your Kindle" overhaul. Still, he believes the issue should be easy to avoid, so long as you don't download e-books (pirated or otherwise) from websites you don't know. Aside from Kindle, another Amazon-owned service was also thrust into the spotlight earlier for exhibiting a security flaw. Audible, the company's audiobooks service, apparently allowed users to use fake emails and credit card numbers in order to download as many files as they want. An Audible spokesperson stressed, however, that transactions made using fake credit cards were "closed quickly" and that the service takes credit card fraud seriously.

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Motorola Moto 360 review: beautiful smartwatch spoiled by poor battery life

Motorola Moto 360 review: beautiful smartwatch spoiled by poor battery life

Samuel Gibbs

The Guardian 

The Motorola Moto 360 is the flagship Android Wear smartwatch and the first with a round screen that looks more like a traditional watch than a geeky gadget.
Like every other Android Wear watch it connects to an Android smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth and has very little functionality without that tether. It can tell the time, set alarms and timers, show steps and heart rate, or your agenda for the day. But that is about it.
When connected to a smartphone, notifications ping from the phone to the watch with a vibrating alert, allowing wearers to see who’s calling, chatting, emailing or any other notification.
Navigating via swipes is easy. Right to left opens more options like skipping tracks or sending dictated replies to Hangouts, left to right steps back through the menus and swiping upward reveals more. Swiping down mutes the notifications.

Wireless charging

The Moto 360 comes with a small inductive charging dock for over night charges. It will also charge on any Qi wireless charger, including the Google Nexus charging pad and others.
A complete charge takes about an hour and the watch displays a night screen with the time and a charging indicator when docked. It cannot be charged with the screen off, which could be an issue at night as the watch is quite bright.

Painless wearing

The Moto 360 is the size of a large man’s watch with a 46mm diameter and 11.5mm depth – but not as large as the super-sized watches popular with footballers and racing drivers. It has a leather strap and a smooth stainless steel back, is comfortable to wear and light on the wrist, weighing 49g. By way of comparison the Samsung Gear Live weighs 59g and the LG G Watch 63g.
Unlike the G Watch, the Moto 360 doesn’t make my wrist sweat and I soon forgot that I was wearing it. The 360 blends in with clothing, looking much more like a watch than other smartwatches: it is a smartwatch masquerading as a classic time piece rather than a piece of technology ostentatiously strapped to the arm.

Heart rate monitor

Unlike the Gear Live, the Moto 360’s heart rate monitor will periodically take readings, recording patterns and telling the wearer whether they are sufficiently active.
Unfortunately the data cannot be exported for use in other apps and the heart rate monitor cannot be turned off.

Flat-tyre screen

The main difference with other smartwatches is the circular screen. It is a flat tyre shape, with a little squared-off section at the bottom housing an ambient light sensor for automatically adjusting the backlight. Most other Android Wear smartwatches do not have automatic brightness adjustment.
No bezel makes the watch look like it’s all screen and with a good selection of attractive watch faces making it look and feel expensive.

Woeful battery

The Moto 360 looks great, works well and is comfortable to wear but its battery life is poor. Unlike most Android Wear watches, the screen cannot be kept on all the time, instead dimming when the wrist is moving, before switching itself off.
The “ambient display” mode can be switched off, which saves battery but also makes it harder to glance at the time, requiring a complete lift of the wrist (rather than a small movement), a tap on the screen or a press of the button on the side to light the screen.
With the ambient display on, using auto-brightness and using the watch to count steps, the 360 lasted from 7.30am till 9.30pm – 14 hours – before dying. That was not long enough to see me from my commute to bed time, which is inexcusable.
With step-counting turned off, the battery lasted from 7.30am till 11pm with 15% left. With ambient display mode turned off it lasted even longer but was much less useful as a watch: often when I tried to read the time with a quick glance it was not lit.

Price

At £200 the Motorola Moto 360 is currently the most expensive Android Wear smartwatch, and will be available in the UK from early October.

Verdict

I really wanted to love the Moto 360 but battery life that cannot see you through a full day’s use is unacceptable. LG’s G Watch will last two days with the screen on all the time, so it can be done.
Turning some features off made it last a day – step-counting I can live without – but unless you are prepared to take a charger with you, the Moto 360 will have to stay at home on weekends away.
The rest of the watch is great. Voice recognition is significantly more accurate and less prone to interference from background noise than the G Watch or the Gear Live, the screen is bright and crisp, the watch faces are attractive and it feels like an expensive time piece rather than a chintzy gadget.
The bezel-free design is a big step forward for smartwatches and Android Wear suits a circular face. Make it last two days and they would have a winner on their hands. Instead the 360 is great until it dies prematurely.
The Moto 360 goes on sale in the UK in October, which gives Motorola half a month to improve the software to last at least a day with all features active. I will continue to use it to see if the battery life improves and update this review accordingly.
Pros: beautiful round screen, light, comfortable to wear, stainless steel case, heart rate monitor, waterproof
Cons: poor battery life, have to disable features to last a day, cannot charge the watch without the screen on

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Microsoft to buy 'Minecraft' creator Mojang for $2.5B

Microsoft to buy 'Minecraft' creator Mojang for $2.5B

CNBC

Microsoft (MSFT) will buy Mojang, the creator of the "Minecraft" video game franchise, for $2.5 billion.

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Apple receives record pre-orders for new iPhones

Apple receives record pre-orders for new iPhones

Reuters

Apple Inc said it received record first-day pre-orders of its new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, with over four million in the first 24 hours, meaning many customers will have to wait for their new phones.
Apple said a significant number of orders will be delivered to customers beginning Friday, but many will be delivered in October.
The company said some of the new iPhone models will be available to customers in its stores on Friday morning.
(Reporting By Lehar Maan in Bangalore; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty)

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Locals, tourists ride out Hurricane Odile in Baja

Locals, tourists ride out Hurricane Odile in Baja

ALBA MORA ROCA
 Associated Press

CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico —Residents and tourists hunkered down in shelters and hotel conference rooms overnight as a powerful and sprawling Hurricane Odile made landfall on the southern Baja California peninsula.
The area is home to gleaming megaresorts, tiny fishing communities and low-lying neighborhoods of flimsy homes. Forecasters predicted a dangerous storm surge with large waves as well as drenching rains capable of causing landslides and flash floods.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said satellite imagery indicates Odile's center made landfall at about 9:45 p.m. PDT near Cabo San Lucas. It said at landfall, Odile had estimated intensity of 125 mph (205 kph), and an automated station near Cabo San Lucas reported a sustained wind of 89 mph (144 kph) with a gust to 116 mph (187 kph). The storm was moving north-northwest at 17 mph (28 kph).
As howling winds whipped palm trees amid pelting rain outside, people bedded down and used magazines to fan themselves in crowded, stuffy safe rooms. Some did crossword puzzles or listened to iPhones. In one hotel near San Jose del Cabo, power went out not long after nightfall and a generator was keeping minimal lights on.
Denise Mellor, a traveler from Orange County, California, was frustrated about a lack of information about the storm and said she was learning more from her daughter back home than from hotel workers.
"It's a little bit (unsettling) that we don't have a choice but to sit in here and hope for the best," Mellor said. "So that makes me a little bit scared."
Mexican authorities evacuated coastal areas and readied shelters for up to 30,000 people.
"We are going to be hit, do not risk your life," warned Marcos Covarrubias, governor of Baja California Sur.
After reaching Category 4 strength on Sunday, Odile weakened some to Category 3 but was still a major storm. The U.S. hurricane center warned of possible coastal flooding and rainfall of 5 to 10 inches, with isolated amounts up to 15 inches.
On Sunday, police with megaphones walked through vulnerable areas in Cabo San Lucas urging people to evacuate.
"I'm leaving. It's very dangerous here," said Felipa Flores, clutching a plastic bag with a few belongings as she took her two small children from her neighborhood of El Caribe to a storm shelter. "Later on we're going to be cut off and my house of wood and laminated cardboard won't stand up to much."
At least 22 airline flights were canceled. Some tourists camped out at the Los Cabos international airport hoping to get out before the storm, but the facility shut down all air operations late in the afternoon.
Luis Felipe Puente, national coordinator for Mexico's civil protection agency, said 164 shelters had been prepared for as many as 30,000 people in Baja California Sur.
A hurricane warning was in effect from Punta Abreojos to Loreto. Mexican authorities declared a maximum alert for areas in or near Odile's path, and ports in Baja California were ordered closed.
In the central Atlantic, Hurricane Edouard had sustained winds near 85 mph (140 kph), although it was forecast to remain far out at sea and pose no threat to land.
The U.S. hurricane center said Edouard's center was 835 miles (1,345 kilometers) northeast of the northern Leeward Islands and was moving northwest at 15 mph (24 kph).

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Hundreds evacuate from 2 California wildfires

Hundreds evacuate from 2 California wildfires

Associated Press 

OAKHURST, Calif. —Two out-of-control wildfires in California forced hundreds of residents to flee from their homes on Sunday, including one near a lakeside resort town that has burned 21 structures, authorities said.
The blaze, sparked shortly after 1:30 p.m. near Bass Lake in Central California, prompted authorities to evacuate about 1,000 residents out of 400 homes, Madera County Sheriff's spokeswoman Erica Stuart said.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said flames damaged or destroyed 21 structures. The Fresno Bee reports one neighborhood was hit especially hard, with several homes turned to ash and smoldering embers.
"This is gut-wrenching," CalFire Battalion Chief Chris Christopherson told the newspaper. "It makes you sick."

The fire started off a road outside of Oakhurst, a foothill community south of the entrance to Yosemite National Park, and made a run to the edge of Bass Lake. Stoked by winds, it quickly charred at least 320 acres, CalFire spokesman Daniel Berlant said.
The fire is 20 percent contained.
The area is a popular destination throughout the year. There were no reports of the blaze affecting the park.

"We have a lot of full-time residents as well as renters and people with vacation homes here," Stuart said.
The destructive fire led Gov. Jerry Brown to secure a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover 75 percent of the cost of fighting the fire, state officials said.
Further north, a wildfire about 60 miles east of Sacramento forced the evacuation of 133 homes. El Dorado County Sheriff's officials said residents of another 406 homes were being told to prepare to flee.

Berlant said the blaze started in a remote area Saturday, but exploded on Sunday when it reached a canyon full of thick, dry brush. It has blackened 4 square miles, and was 10 percent contained.
Meanwhile in Southern California, evacuation orders for 200 homes in Orange County's Silverado Canyon were lifted late Sunday as firefighters contained 50 percent of a wildfire.
The residents were evacuated after the fire broke out Friday. The U.S. Forest Service downgraded the fire's size from 2 ½ square miles to 1 ½ square miles due to better mapping of the blaze.
Six firefighters have suffered minor injuries, many of them heat-related as the region baked under triple-digit temperatures.

A heat wave was expected to last through Tuesday in Southern California, and a smoke advisory was in effect for parts of Riverside and Orange counties.
Berlant said crews were making progress on two wildfires that broke out Saturday in Northern California.

A wildfire in the Sierra Nevada foothills about halfway between Sacramento and Reno burned 250 acres, destroyed two homes and three outbuildings. The burned homes were in Alta Sierra, a community of some 6,000 people about five miles south of Grass Valley.

A 417-acre blaze in Mendocino County destroyed five structures and five outbuildings, according to CalFire. It was 50 percent contained

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Seed Is Creating A Truly Idiot-Proof Internet Of Things

Seed Is Creating A Truly Idiot-Proof Internet Of Things

John Biggs

TechCrunch

In the vast panoply of potential home networking protocols, there are only a few worth worrying about. Wi-Fi works well but it can go down and ZigBee and the like are sparsely supported. But Bluetooth Smart is local, secure, and easy to use. And that’s what Seed Labs is using to connect our lamps, our blinds, and even our tea kettles.
This Polish startup has built a small chip – about as big as a postage stamp and twice as thick as one – that can go into any appliance. Chip-enabled devices will then show up automatically on phones that are compatible with Bluetooth Smart, allowing you to control lights, put the kettle on for tea, or drop the shutters. It’s a B2B play that could revolutionize how we think about home networking and control.

“We truly believe that in the near future things around us will be defined by software. Right now we are surrounded by lots of iot gadgets. However, all of everyday products – like light bulbs, kettles, switches, shades, etc. – are still not connected. We don’t want the IoT world to be owned by geeks. We want ordinary people to feel comfortable using connected devices,” said Marek Wierzbicki, CMO of Seed Labs. The company is now based in San Francisco.

The company will license the chip to appliance makers and creates their software in Krakow, Poland.
“We are placing a strategic bet on bluetooth smart, considering it a game changer in iot world. We build our software on top of that to make it extremly simple to use. Our competitors are based on other communication protocols which are not intuitive and not so easy,” said Wierzbicki.

The company’s demo was quite compelling. To use the system you simply plug in a compatible appliance and it shows up in the app with the necessary interface elements. For example, you can set the length of time you want to boil water or even tell lights to go on and off remotely. It is completely plug and play – there is little initial setup and the system remembers devices that have been added to the network permanently. The company is working on some unique interface systems as well, including a unique Nest-like knob that can sense proximity and motion.

The devices also include iBeacon compatibility and can interact with iPhones in real time. The company announced availability of its chip line as well as a $1 million angel investment that closed today.

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Verizon To Launch Internet TV Service That Lets You Pay For Only The Channels You Want

Verizon To Launch Internet TV Service That Lets You Pay For Only The Channels You Want

Timothy Stenovec

The Huffington Post 

Verizon is finally ready to acknowledge that cable TV just isn't working for a lot of us anymore.
The company is planning to launch its Internet-based TV service that can be watched on mobile devices in the "late first half of 2015," Lowell McAdam, Verizon's CEO, said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference in New York on Thursday.

It's unclear what exactly the service would look like, but McAdam said it would offer "a la carte" options, rather than being bundled like expensive cable packages are now.
Think Netflix, but with live streaming. McAdam said at the conference that the service would include programming from "the big four" networks -- CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox.

"No one wants to have 300 channels on your wireless device," he said, according to a transcript of the conference. Greg Ireland, a research manager at IDC, the technology research firm, said Verizon's offering could borrow ideas from services like Netflix or Amazon Instant Video, which offer interactive menus and will remember where you are in a program, regardless of what device you started watching it on.

Verizon's move comes as the TV industry is set to undergo a massive shift. The rise of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video and Hulu, which for a flat fee offer on-demand viewing of movies, TV shows and original programming, pose a threat to traditional "linear" cable and satellite. An increasing number of people -- especially young people, a highly coveted demographic for advertisers -- are cutting the pay TV cord and opting for streaming services over expensive cable or satellite packages. According to a report this spring from Experian Marketing Services , nearly a quarter of young adults between 18 and 34 who subscribe to Hulu or Netflix don't pay for TV.

Experian also said that the number of cord-cutting homes has increased dramatically in just three years, from 5.1 million homes in 2010 to 7.6 million homes in 2013.
Pay TV subscriptions have been flat or declining slightly, while Netflix continues to grow at a rapid clip. Netflix ended the June quarter with 36.24 million members in the U.S., up from 29.81 million at the same time last year.

About 100 million households in the U.S. pay for traditional TV.
It's unclear what exactly Verizon's product would look like. But to get an idea, said IDC's Ireland, it could be helpful to look to what Dish is working on. The company is developing a service that would allow you to watch live TV on multiple devices, but not require a cable box.
"[It could be] a service that offers fewer channels at a smaller price point, targeting a piece of the market that may not now be pay TV subscribers," Ireland said of Verizon's new product. Such a service would "appeal to those outside of the pay TV universe today and get them back into that universe."

Verizon's Internet TV product will incorporate technology from Intel's OnCue, which Verizon announced it would buy from the chip maker in January. Intel previously planned to launch its own TV product by the end of last year, but ran into opposition from cable and satellite companies, which make tons of money from expensive bundles.

Verizon's McAdam told investors that much of the technology is in place for the network. Now, the company is negotiating with content providers, which in the last two years have become much more receptive to delivering programming in different ways.

This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post

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America Pays More Than Anyone Else for Internet

America Pays More Than Anyone Else for Internet

Grant Burningham

Newsweek

The amount an American family spends on phone, television and Internet services each year can easily come to several thousand dollars. If that sounds like a lot, it is. In other parts of the world, communication services are much cheaper. A British family, for example, could spend roughly one-third of what an American family does for comparable communications services.

Ofcom, the regulator of communications in the U.K., has compared the cost of services provided to the British with other major nations. The findings were clear. In one example, the regulator looked at a connected household in six countries: the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain. These households consisted of two parents and two teenage children, each with his or her own mobile device but with different usage patterns. Adults typically use more voice and teens more text messages and data. In addition, these households use landlines, home Internet connections and a pay-TV service.

The study found that France offered the cheapest total cost, $127.94 a month for the connected household. Services measured were a combination of fixed-line voice, fixed broadband, mobile voice, mobile messaging, mobile broadband and TV. The U.K. ranked second, with a monthly price tag of $132.92. The U.S. ranked last, with a monthly bill of $360.56. Italy, Germany and Spain were all cheaper than the U.S.

Ofcom also looked at other situations, from low-use households, and in every case analyzed by Ofcom, the U.S. had either the most expensive services or the second most expensive.
Part of the reason for the difference in cost is that the U.K. has the cheapest mobile phone and fixed broadband rates among major countries, while the U.S. has the most expensive. The only areas where the U.S. offers any price advantage is pay TV, where the U.S. ranked third out of six countries, and fixed voice, where the U.S. also ranked third.

Most U.K. consumers purchase their communication services in a bundle. A single provider delivers a package with TV, Internet, phone and cellphone services. In the U.S., services are often sold separately. Regulatory policy differs as well. For example, U.K. regulators require clear pricing information. In the U.S., pricing tends to be confusing, and comparisons between competitors are hard to make. U.K. regulators also have tried to ensure that consumers are free to switch if they get a better deal, while U.S. customers can be locked into multiyear contracts. No matter what the reasons are, when it comes to the cost of communications services, the U.K. seems to be sending America a message.

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Selena Gomez Debuts New Bangs 

Credit: Instagram

Now that summer is practically over, it looks like Selena Gomez wanted to change her hairstyle for the fall ,

Credit: Instagram

On Saturday, the 22-year-old singer took to Instagram to debut her new look, which included bangs! And we've got to say, we are loving the bangs.

Back in June, Selena traded in her medium brown locks for a fierce black 'do. So we're guessing she likes to celebrate the start of a new season with a new hairstyle. Either way, she looks gorgeous with any hairstyle!

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Happy 21st Birthday:See Pics of Niall Horan's Style Transformation

SEP 13, 2014

Credit: Tumblr/Getty

Niall Horan is finally 21! To celebrate his birthday, we rounded up 21 photos – from his childhood to present day – that show his style transformation. As you'll see, the One Direction singer has changed so much ever since he was a little kid!

Credit:Tumblr

Credit:Tumblr

Credit:YouTube

Credit:Splash News

Credit:Getty

Credit:Getty

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Credit:Instagram

Credit:Splash News

Credit: Getty

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