Blackberry fans line up here: pre-orders for the new Classic are open

Blackberry fans line up here: pre-orders for the new Classic are open

Richard Lawler

Engadget

Platform loyal BBM addicts have a new device to consider -- other than the Passport -- now that Blackberry is taking pre-orders for its upcoming phone. The Classic (aka Q20) brings the design, keyboard and trackpad users are used to, plus a large square touch screen, the latest version of BlackBerry OS and support for Android apps. Currently only a GSM version is available (no Verizon, Sprint or US Cellular support here) in the US for $450 and shipments are expected to start in mid-December. Oddly, BlackBerry hasn't revealed more details or specs about the phone, but those should be revealed closer to its release. Our best look at the phone came from this leak, feel free to take a look back before deciding to whether to place an order.

Pre-order the #BlackBerryClassic today!

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Now all Walmart stores will match Amazon prices

Now all Walmart stores will match Amazon prices

Devindra Hardawar
Engadget 

Rather than going for an Amazon deal, Walmart wants you to nab that PlayStation 4 in its stores this holiday season. The world's largest retailer will start offering price matching for Amazon and other online stores starting tomorrow. That's actually something around half of Walmart stores are already doing, but now it's official policy for all 4,300-plus locations across the US. It follows on the heels of other aggressive moves from the company for the all-important holiday shopping season, including last year's plan to match competitors' Black Friday prices a week early. Online shopping is an undying threat for Walmart and other brick and mortar retailers, so an official online matching policy makes sense. If anything, we wonder what took Walmart so long to make it happen nationwide.
[Photo: Amazon]
Reuters

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Google is driving all over Bangladesh to teach college students about the internet

Google is driving all over Bangladesh to teach college students about the internet

Sean Buckley

Engadget 

Think you've been on some epic road trips? You've got nothing on Google: the Mountain View company just announced that it's taking a 3G-equipped on a year-long tour of Bangladesh. The program, simply dubbed "Google Bus Bangladesh," is an educational initiative that aims to expose 500,000 students to new tools and web applications that can help them start new businesses. The bus will visit over 500 campuses (at 35 locations) over the next 12-months to lead short seminars and teach students how to use their new schools on the Android platform. Locals seem excited, and have already taken to the Bus' Google Plus page to make sure their school is a part of the tour -- and to share pictures of the internet-connected bus en route, of course.
Google+, Google

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Galaxy Note Edge Review: A Screen That Gives 110%

Galaxy Note Edge Review: A Screen That Gives 110%

Geoffrey A. Fowler

The Wall Street Journal.

First, Samsung made phones bigger. Now it’s making them busier.

Starting today in the U.S., Samsung is selling a variant of the Galaxy Note 4 phablet called the Galaxy Note Edge, distinguished by a 5.6-inch screen that cascades over its right side. It’s one big curved display, but the effect is equivalent to adding a second tall and skinny touch screen where you’d normally grip the phone. Your thumb gets a screen of its own.

Giving 110% can sometimes be too much.

The Note Edge may appeal to Android lovers who enjoy customizing their phones. With the side screen, you get 160 precious new rows of pixels to add a launchpad for apps or a Times Square-like news ticker. Some people may find creative uses for the space, for instance by personalizing it with a pencil-thin animated picture. The unusual design certainly attracts attention.

But to me, the Note Edge ends up being yet another distraction in the arms race for our attention. I’m glad Samsung is experimenting with new designs, but the Edge just tacks on new territory to an already cluttered phone landscape.

I don’t object to the physical form. Thumbs are the most important digits for operating smartphones, and the curved edge was built for thumbing. Holding the Note Edge phablet is more comfortable than you might think, at least if you’re right handed. The right-edge screen has a bezel at the bottom where your thumb can rest. And if you do inadvertently brush the screen, Samsung’s multitouch system can usually differentiate it from an intentional tap.

(If you are left-handed, you can flip the Note Edge upside-down, though your volume and power buttons are then in the wrong locations.)

While Samsung conquered the engineering feats required to make the screen curve, it needs better ideas about what to do with the extra real estate. The Note Edge feels like an experiment, and Samsung says it’s hoping outside developers will be inspired by the design to come up with uses for it.

Flicking the edge to the left or right swipes through a series of panels that operate independently from the rest of what’s happening on the screen. You can use these slim panels to launch apps, get alerts, show a ruler or even play games. Samsung says the extra screen allows you to have “interruption free” notifications and access to important information, because you don’t have to leave your main app to use them.

I found the shortcut access to my favorite apps handy, though Android hardly lacks for other customizable spots to stash apps. Still, too often the edge panels just meant more icons, text and pictures flashing or tempting me to fiddle with them.

Who really wants trending Twitter topics crawling sideways along their phone while they’re trying to surf the Web, take a call or compose an email? You can make these screen panels go dark by tapping in the middle of the screen, but then your phone is instantly the same as the already worthwhile—and $100 cheaper—Galaxy Note 4.

The best use for the edge screen is what Samsung calls night clock mode. It offers a faint read-out of the time along the curved edge that you can see when your phone is laying flat on your nightstand. This saves you from having to pick up your phone or activate a bright screen that might disturb your eyes or others.

Night clock works because it uses the new form factor as an opportunity to take a new look at how we use the lock screen. Too much else about the Edge’s new software just clutters the existing phone experience, instead of seizing the opportunity to simplify or reinvent it.

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This Messaging App Will Force You To Be Brutally Honest

This Messaging App Will Force You To Be Brutally Honest

Karyne Levy
Business Insider 

The beauty of texting is that you can rework what you want to say. If you type out a sentence and notice a mistake, it's easy to fix it before you send it out. Even better, if you need to compose yourself before sending out the message at all, there's time. You don't have to hit send until your text is perfect.
Some messaging apps, such as BBM, let you unsend a message after you send it. And iMessages shows your companion a set of ellipses, letting him or her know that a thought is incoming.
But a new Android app called Beam Messenger takes the notion of "real time" to a whole new level. Your companion sees your message as you're typing it. Letter by letter. Typo by typo. Thought by thought.



Buzzfeed calls it "terrifyingly transparent." Others agree.
"There's an appeal to non-transparency when it comes to our communications," writes The Atlantic's Megan Garber. "Humans tend to be indecisive and deliberate in pretty much equal measure; messages that don't send until you actually send them suit this tendency."
And although that might be true, there's something refreshing about an app that forces you to be honest. Or at least forces you to be on your best behavior.
No more crafting the perfect sentence in the middle of an argument. No more hiding the fact that you're a terrible speller.

In a world where, as Garber points out, texting is more popular than making calls, having a real-time way to send texts that's truly real time is a nice change of pace. If only to know what's hiding behind the other side of the ellipses.
You can download Beam Messenger on Google Play here. According to Beam Messenger's website, it's coming soon for iOS.

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The Prynt Case Turns Your Smartphone Into A Polaroid Camera

The Prynt Case Turns Your Smartphone Into A Polaroid Camera

Kyle Russell

TechCrunch 

Hot off of their HAXLR8R demo day presentation last week, hardware startup Prynt was nice enough to drop by TechCrunch HQ to show off the latest prototypes of their smartphones cases, which contain built-in printers so you can instantly get a copy of that selfie with your best friends.
The small French startup has been working on turning your smartphone into a miniature Polaroid camera since January. They’ve spent much of that time visiting Shenzen to source parts and iterating on a simple design that sends a photo to the case over Bluetooth and then prints it by heating paper filled with ink.

The current version takes about 50 seconds from photo to printed paper and can only hold one piece of paper at a time. But the planned consumer version will hold 10-30 sheets of paper and take fewer than 30 seconds to print thanks to better hardware integration and a direct physical connection between the phone and case.

Prynt CEO Clément Perrot says that the case will only cost $99 when first made available via a Kickstarter early next year and will be able to support flagship phones with ~4.x-inch screens. They’re currently working on a mount that will also account for phablets like the Galaxy Note or iPhone 6 Plus.

One neat feature that could help the Prynt case gain traction is an augmented reality feature built into the company’s camera app. When you take a photo with Prynt’s app, it actually records a video of the moments around when you clicked the button and sends it to the cloud. When you hold up the physical photo to your phone’s camera with the app open, it is overlaid with a Play button that shows that video in place of the picture itself.

It’s like Snapchat but with a physical token that gives you permission to see videos. In order to make it even more secure, the company is looking into tricks like hiding pixels in images that would prevent them from being copied, so a photo of the photo wouldn’t bring up the play button in the app.
It’s really nifty to see in person, and in the longer run Prynt is looking at ways they could let you print a photo of one thing — say, your cat — and show a video of something else when it’s held to the app.

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U.S. government warns on bug in Apple's iOS software

U.S. government warns on bug in Apple's iOS software

Reuters 

The U.S. government warned iPhone and iPad users on Thursday to be on the alert for hackers who may exploit a vulnerability in Apple Inc's iOS operating system that would enable them to steal sensitive data.

There was the potential for hacks using a newly identified technique known as the "Masque Attack," the government said in an online bulletin from the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Teams.
The network security company, FireEye Inc (FEYE.O), disclosed the vulnerability behind the "Masque Attack" earlier this week, saying it had been exploited to launch a campaign dubbed "WireLurker" and that more attacks could follow.

Hackers could potentially steal login credentials, access sensitive data stored on iOS devices and remotely monitor activity on those devices, the government said.
Such attacks could be avoided if iPad and iPhone users only installed apps from Apple's App Store or from their own organizations, it said.

Users should not click "Install" from pop-ups when surfing the web. If iOS flashes a warning that says "Untrusted App Developer," users should click on "Don't Trust" and immediately uninstall the app, the bulletin said.

Representatives of Apple could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Twitter reveals improvements to rein in Facebook's lead

Twitter reveals improvements to rein in Facebook's lead

Chris Johnston

The Guardian

Twitter has revealed a number of planned improvements in a bid to rein in Facebook’s lead in the social media battleground.
One of the most significant could be imminent changes to direct messages, which will allow users to share and discuss tweets privately, said Kevin Weil, vice-president of product, at the company’s first financial analyst day in San Francisco.
The chief executive, Dick Costolo, said: “I strongly believe private messaging virality is important to our long-term growth”, in a reference to content that goes viral.
The move comes after Facebook’s recent controversial introduction of a separate Messenger app which mobile users of the social network have been forced to use to communicate privately with other members.
Weil also said that Twitter users would be able to upload video in addition to short, looping Vine clips by next summer: “You should be able to record, edit and share your own videos natively on Twitter.”

Instant timeline

Twitter said that the site needed to ensure new users understood how to use it. An upcoming “instant timeline” will offer content without making them search Twitter for individual users to follow.
“We’re exploring ways to surface relevant tweets so the content that is interesting to you is easy to discover … while still preserving the real-time nature of the platform that makes Twitter special,” Weil said.
Twitter has 284 million users, compared with Facebook’s 1.3 billion, and has been searching for ways to drive growth and keep users more active on the site. The company said last month that timeline views per user - a key measure of engagement - fell by 7% globally in the third quarter.
It would be possible to roughly double the number of Twitter users to more than 550m in the “intermediate term”, with a longer term goal of 1billion-plus, executives said.

“Consumption-first experience”

Anthony Noto, Twitter’s new chief financial officer, was not concerned that the number of posts on Twitter has remained flat at about 500m a day. The company wanted to get people to read more, rather than post more: “We really need to build a consumption-first experience.”
One of his slides read: “We believe we have the best aggregated content on one platform in the world - much of which is unique, appeals to everyone, and is relevant on a daily basis … There are a number of potential growth drivers that, in combination, if all executed successfully, could drive over $11bn in revenue.”
Twitter said it had about 60,000 advertisers, while more than 9m small and medium-sized businesses had a presence on the service.
However, analysts were reserving judgment on the ambitious growth plans. Richard Greenfield, of BTIG Research, said: “The question becomes, ‘will the product innovations drive a significantly larger user base and greater engagement/time spent with the product?’ Time will tell.”
The company also said it would focus on building the fastest app, increasing speeds on Wi-Fi connections by 50%, with a 60% increase on mobile networks.

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 Taylor Swift Says Her Dream Collaborator Is Vance Joy

GETTY IMAGES

Taylor Swift revealed her dream concert guests, and one of them is Vance Joy! In an interview withTime, she says that, along with Iggy Azalea and Haim, her dream stage collaboration is the guy who just so happens to be joining her 1989 tour.

"The things that I try to really focus on when bringing out people as surprise guests is what do my fans really want to see, what would they lose their minds over?" she said.

"Not to show too many of my cards here — but I have probably 10 guests that I’m thinking about that would be amazing."

Since the "Shake It Off" singer knows how to get what she wants, we wouldn't be surprised if she makes her other dream collaborations a reality. And for those Swifties who can't make it to her concerts, a studio duet would also be super-cool!

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Zayn Malik Did the Most Adorable Thing For A Fan:

Zayn Malik may be the shyest member of One Direction, but he still has an amazingly big heart! The singer showed how much he cares about a Directioner named Bella Marie Yallop, who recently lost her mother to cancer, by recording her a supportive video.

Her father posted a message on Facebook asking for a message from her favorite member, Zayn, as a present for her sixth birthday.

Taylor Swift revealed her dream concert guests, and one of them is Vance Joy! In an interview withTime, she says that, along with Iggy Azalea and Haim, her dream stage collaboration is the guy who just so happens to be joining her 1989 tour.

"The things that I try to really focus on when bringing out people as surprise guests is what do my fans really want to see, what would they lose their minds over?" she said.

Since he's been feeling ill lately — and even skipped out on 1D's EMAs acceptance speech — we think it's adorable that he took the time to make her day. How cute!

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Taylor Swift Calls Spotify a Liar

GETTY IMAGES

Taylor Swift's decision to pull all her songs off Spotify caused major controversy, and now her people are calling out the founder of the music streaming service, Daniel Ek. After he wrote a post claiming that the "Shake It Off" singer would have gained about $6 million if she kept her songs on the site, David Borchetta says they haven't received nearly as much.

The Big Machine record label exec said that she only got $500,000 from the site.

Maybe this explains why Taylor totally slammed Spotify when justifying her decision? She recently told Time again that she doesn't think it's a good model.

"I think that people should feel that there is a value to what musicians have created, and that’s that," she said.

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Justin Bieber Unfollow Selena Gomez on Instagram to Win Her Back?

Justin Bieber's decision to unfollow Selena Gomez on Instagram was pretty jaw-dropping, but it might be part of a big plan to win her back! According to Hollywood Life, the singer wants to woo his on-again, off-again girlfriend by completely ignoring her and making her jealous.

“Justin is under the assumption that if he completely ignores Selena and blows her off, she will come running," their source said.

"So far, nothing else has worked — sending flowers, trying to be ultra sweet, and going to Bible study. It’s like the more he tries to impress Selena, the more she avoids him."

“So he figured he would go back to what has worked in the past — ignore her, flirt with hot girls and act like he doesn’t care. That’s the real reason he stopped following her on Instagram."

We heard that the "Boyfriend" singer was planning an elaborate gesture to win her back, but we guess that wasn't working! Still, that response sounds like his old behavior, which made Selena get fed up with him in the first place. We're not so sure ignoring her is going to win her back!

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