Monthly Archives July 2013

iWork for iCloud Beta Gives a Tantalizing Hint of What's to Come

iWork for iCloud

MacNewsWorld

iWork for iCloud Beta is not as feature-rich as iWork on the ground, but it’s loaded with enough functionality to provide early experimenters with a pretty good idea of what’s to come. For many users, it’s already enough to meet their needs. For power users, it offers the promise of robust functionality in an elegant format — it’s certainly easier on the eyes than something like Google Docs.


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Windows 8 Tool Kit

ToolKitwindows 8.1

As soon as Windows 8 was released in July 2012, there were a flurry of posts designed to induct  everyday users into the mysteries of the new OS.  This ToolKit is an on-going collection of some of the best posts, tips and tricks relating to Windows 8, Windows RT and now Windows 8.1.  We will continue to add resources as they become available. (Your Advisors)

Woody Leonhard is one of the outstanding writers for Windows Secrets Newsletter and has dedicated his time to helping us all understand the in’s and out’s of Microsoft’s Operating Systems and making the best of them.  This is one of the first guides that were published for Windows 8 and contain some very basic but valuable tips and tricks, particularly for first time users confronting the mysteries of Redmond on a brand new machine.

This is an excellent collection of tips and tricks for Windows 8 written by the acknowledge expert in the field, Paul Thurott, author of Paul Thurott’s Supersite for Windows.  Paul has also written an entire guide to Windows Phone 8 and is …


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Review: Nokia Lumia 920

Lumia 920
Finally

After an interminable wait, the ice suddenly broke when I was invited to the grand opening of the Microsoft store in Troy June 2013. There I met a helpful person who works for a West Coast PR firm contracted to promote Microsoft events.  Through them I got to the right person in less than a week and had a Lumia 920 Windows Phone 8 arrive in another week.

Heavy Enough to Cause Damage
My fire engine red Lumia 920 came out of the box swinging like a heavy weight.  It is one of the heftiest mobile phones you will ever carry but…it feels strangely lighter than its older sister, the Lumia 900.  This is perhaps because of the tapering of the edges on the phone which gives it a markedly more comfortable grip on the device. Unfortunately the bright minds that designed the Lumia 920 felt that the external surface had to be as slippery as possible!  In the first hour of having the device out of the box it squirted out of my hands no less than a half dozen times.  If you are going to make this your next smartphone, invest in a rubber protector that wraps …


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Apple restores developer site after attack

Gregg Keizer, Computerworldgkeizer@computerworld.com, Computerworld

Apple late on Friday restored key sections of its developer website, including the download center, more than a week after it took the portal offline.

By Friday evening, the iOS, Mac and Safari Dev Centers were again operational, as were areas dedicated to software downloads, digital certificates, and Apple’s bug-reporting system.

About half the site remained offline, however, including the developer-to-developer discussion forums.

The restoration of the iOS, Mac, and Safari Dev Centers, along with Software Downloads, gave developers access to programming tools and the prerelease builds of iOS 7 and OS X Mavericks, the mobile and desktop operating systems Apple will upgrade this fall.

Apple took the developer website down on July 18, but did not reveal the cause until Sunday, July 22, when it confirmed “an intruder attempted to secure personal information of our registered developers from our developer website.”


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Google Chromecast Review

From Wired.com

Google’s Chromecast, a little gadget that plugs into an HDMI port on the back of your TV to let you watch Internet or browser-based video, just launched yesterday. We haven’t had time to fully process it for a review yet, but after spending a day with it, we do have some initial thoughts and answers.

  • The main thing to understand is that this is not an Apple TV or TiVo like thing. It’s fundamentally different. Think of it like this: If there are things on the web that you would like to see on your television, this is an extremely easy, portable, and inexpensive way to do that. It will also run smartphone apps that use the Googlecast API, but for now there are only three Android apps that support that–Netflix, YouTube, and Google Play.

FULL REVIEW


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Deaf Enjoy Movies with Closed Caption Glasses

Geoff Herbert, Syracuse, NY

For the deaf and hard-of-hearing, going to the movies has been a difficult experience. Scary villains speak in creepy whispers, plot details are sometimes left to voiceovers, and animated characters are impossible to lipread, no matter how hard Pixar and DreamWorks try to make them look realistic.

But now hearing impaired moviegoers can enjoy films on the big screen the same way they do at home: with subtitles and closed captions.

Sony Entertainment Access Glasses provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard-of-hearing as well as audio descriptions for the blind and visually impaired.

Regal Cinemas’ new Sony Entertainment Access Glasses bring the rest of the story to the screen to 6,000 screens nationwide, including at three theaters in the Syracuse area. The spectacles fit like 3-D glasses, but instead project text of the actors’ dialogue and descriptions of various sounds about 10 feet in front of the user.


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Facebook Cashes In On Mobile Ads

by Jennifer Van Grove
| July 24, 2013 4:46 PM PDT
Facebook’s “fail harder” and “think wrong” philosophies could pay off in the long run.
In its second-quarter earnings report Wednesday, Facebook revealed that, on mobile, its business is healthier and stronger than anyone could have predicted.
The social network said that it made 41 percent of its $1.6 billion second-quarter advertising revenue, or roughly $656 million, from mobile. Heading into the report, even the most bullish of analysts were only predicting that mobile would account for a third of advertising revenue. Most were about $200 million off the mark.


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Podcast 1329 July 27, 2013 : Helping the Blind See with Their Ears

Show Notes:

Hearing is Seeing

Podcast 1329 July 27, 2013 Ted Lennox, our veteran technologist for the blind, introduces Robert Pakko, young inventor of audio aid for the blind.  The eleventh grader at Dearborn High School has developed sound object identifier to let you know when there is something in front or to the side of a person.  The signals provide a different musical note depending where an object is located.

Helping blind learn to use computer technology: Contact John Whitacre at www.ichallenged.org

Google Glasses Help the Autistic

Paul Louden, a 30 year old Asperger’s Syndrome adult from Houston ,was selected as one of the bold creative individuals to test out the new Google Glass. Paul has his own radio broadcast, called Understanding Autism and will talk about how the Google Glasses can help the autistic.

MiTechNews.com

Mike BrennanWeekly feature with Mike Brennan, editor and publisher of MiTechNews.com, highlighting technology headlines from Michigan and around the world that impact of our state’s growing high tech sector.

This week we launch our co-branded MiTechNews Newsletter in collaboration with the Internet Advisor.

“MITechNews.Com would like to thank Mophie.Com, the maker of the iPhone juice pack,  for helping make possible


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Microsoft Releases OWA for iPhone and iPad

Mary Beth Foley

Microsoft has built native Outlook Web App clients for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, both of which can be installed directly from the Apple App Store as of July 16.

Outlook.com(Credit: Microsoft)

The catch: Users need an Office 365 subscription that includes Exchange Online to make use of the new, free apps.

Outlook Web App (OWA) is a client with that provides email, calendar, and contact functionality. It works the same way that Outlook Web App in the browser does. However, according to a new Office 365 Technology blog post from Microsoft, the native versions provide “additional capabilities that are only possible through native integration of the app with mobile devices.”


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Detroit May be Going Bankrupt but Tech Start-ups are Going Strong

FastCompany

This week, the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the largest city in the U.S. ever to do so. By some estimates, the city owes as much as $20 billion. But the news is unlikely to halt the growth of Detroit’s burgeoning tech scene, according to some of its entrepreneurs.

Full Story


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