Google 'Monotune' is goddamn good metaphor marketing
Great advertising strikes a chord, in this instance quite literally, with consumers. The best compares the primary product to another, effectively evoking emotional connection. Apple's "1984" commercial and "Get a Mac" series are excellent examples. In the former, the IBM PC is portrayed as Big Brother, while in the latter actors represent Mac and PC—the benefits of one and detriments of the other. Both examples use metaphors to simplify complex comparisons and to make lasting impressions rather than to checklist features.
Google spot "Monotune" is a magnificent metaphor—piano of 88 different keys representing Android set against another, portraying iPhone, where all the notes are the same. Music is memorable, and the comparison striking as much for the under current. Apple's brand often is associated with music and also creative individuals.
Eternal 5D nanostructured glass optical discs hold 360TB of data and last billions of years
Storing data is extremely important for many situations. Businesses often need to retain information for legal purposes, while home users cherish things like family photos and heirloom recipes. For many people, utilizing flash drives, optical media, or the cloud is sufficient. I prefer redundancy -- cloud and local data.
What if you need to store a lot of data? I'm talking, like, a lot of friggin' data. Well, your needs may be met by a new invention from the University of Southampton. Not only can its newly announced Eternal 5D nanostructured glass discs hold 360TB of data, but they can last billions of years too. Hell, these discs could possibly outlive the Earth and its sun!
Mozilla wants to educate us all on encryption
Terrorists use encryption. They also breathe air, drive cars, and drink water. What do I mean by saying this? Well, just because a bad person uses something, doesn't make the thing they use evil. In fact, encryption is not evil at all -- it is a tool to protect the privacy and communications of all people.
Sadly, not everybody understands encryption. There is nothing wrong with being ignorant on a subject -- not everyone can be knowledgeable about everything. With that said, some politicians and other decision-makers could enact policy about encryption due to knee-jerk reactions to things they don't understand. Luckily, Mozilla has a new initiative aimed at educating people as to what encryption actually is.
Amazon Web Services buys NICE to strengthen cloud offerings, boost customer base
Amazon Web Services, Amazon's cloud computing arm, has bought the Italian software and service company NICE for an undisclosed sum. AWS is after NICE’s 2D and 3D desktop cloud virtualization software that allows 3D developers and game designers access to work remotely from any type of computer.
This works because the hardware required to render the 3D images is supplied by the cloud not the computer that the developer is using to access their designs.
Copy Plain Text strips the formatting from copied text (Firefox)
You’re browsing the web, find some interesting text, copy and paste it elsewhere… And then realize it’s got all the original formatting, now entirely unnecessary. And maybe an unwanted image, too.
Copy Plain Text is a Firefox add-on which supports copying plain text only, and adds some handy text processing extras as well.
Intel may soon launch 10TB SSDs
Intel’s SSDs may soon see a significant increase in their capacity and speed as a result of Micron’s latest chips, which could also be used to create competitive SSDs that are as small as flash drives.
Micron is responsible for producing the flash which is used in Intel’s SSDs and now it has begun manufacturing and distributing its 3D NAND flash in large quantities. The company’s 3D flash chips would allow tiny SSDs to reach a capacity of 3.5TB, and 2.5 inch SSDs could possibly hold even more than 10TB of storage.
Automate almost any PC task with AlomWare Actions Lite
AlomWare Actions Lite is a scripting tool which allows even novice users to automate many PC tasks.
There are commands to launch applications, download web pages, send emails, type text, simulate mouse clicks, work with files, and a whole lot more, and these may all be combined to make up a single action.
Women are excellent coders, according to GitHub research
A survey back in 2013 found that only 11.2 percent of software developers were female. Working then on the premise that males would be prejudiced against female coders work, a group of students has now studied the acceptance rate of GitHub pull-requests by gender.
A pull-request is when volunteers submit work to a project and it receives some scrutiny by the project team, they often accept the work or reject it with some advice. What the study team has discovered is that 78 percent of work submitted by women was accepted, which compared favorably to only 74 percent for men.
Android founder Andy Rubin wants to give you a free dashcam, there's just one catch...
Andy Rubin, best known as the founder of Android, became the head of the division after Google purchased the mobile operating system. He left the company in 2014 after briefly heading the robotics division, and founded Playground Global.
Since then his tech incubator has provided funding and help to many startups with Google being one of the sponsors of this venture.
Store your personal data in a HAT to keep it safe
As we use the internet we give away information to lots of sites from shopping portals to search engines. The growth of the Internet of Things is likely to see a further boost in the amount of data held and shared about us.
The Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) at the University of Warwick in the UK is working on £1.2 million HAT (Hub-of-all-things) research project to develop a platform technology where individuals can keep all their personal data in one place.
LG unveils new stylus-toting phablet
LG likes to do things differently when it comes to product announcements, revealing some things ahead of the big unveiling. Case in point are the Quick Cover accessory and Active Display technology for its upcoming G5, which were presented ahead of the new flagship. But with its new Stylus 2, I think it has taken things a bit too far.
LG says that Stylus 2 will be unveiled at MWC 2016, which takes place later this week in Barcelona. But, considering that it has officially announced virtually everything we may want to know about this new phablet and even posted presentation photos, I wonder exactly what will be left for it to "unveil".
New solution protects enterprise websites from attack
Some of the latest cyber attacks seek to steal information using man-in-the-browser (MITB) attacks. These represent a dangerous trend because they circumvent even the strongest authentication techniques by hijacking the session after the user has authenticated a bank or other site.
Threat intelligence start up buguroo is looking to combat this with its new online fraud detection solution that can detect hijacked sessions in real time and stop them before any money leaves the bank.
Microsoft's Lego-like PC makes upgrading super-easy
Part of the reason the PC was originally so successful is down upgradability, and that’s still a factor today. If your computer starts to run a little sluggish, you can always add more RAM, or swap your HDD for an SSD. Some PCs are easier to upgrade than others, but Microsoft is looking into a way to make upgrading so easy that absolutely anyone could do it.
The idea is a modular computer that consists of magnetic units that you can snap off without the use of tools and replace with newer, better components. Not unlike building a PC from Lego.
UK government wants money-making porn sites to age-check visitors
The UK government is launching a public consultation over its plans to require pornographic websites to verify that visitors are aged 18 or over. The Conservative party wants to deliver on its manifesto pledge to introduce age verification to all porn sites, but the latest proposals go further.
The government wants all companies that profit from pornography online to implement systems to have a legal requirement to ensure that visitors are over 18. The consultation runs until 12 April and has the aim of using British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) issued 18 / 18R ratings for sites, but it's unclear how effective the system would be for free porn sites.
The Vega+ is a handheld ZX Spectrum packed with retro goodness
If you grew up in the UK in the 1980s, you likely either had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64. I was firmly in the Spectrum camp, and whiled away much of my youth playing classics such as Jet Set Willy and Skool Daze.
Retro Computers, led by Sir Clive Sinclair, last year resurrected the Spectrum in the form of the Vega, and this year it’s following up that low-cost games computer with a handheld model -- the Vega+.
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