LG reveals stylus-toting G3

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South Korean maker LG plans to introduce a stylus-toting version of its acclaimed G3 Android flagship. According to a new video posted by the company on YouTube, its upcoming handset will be called G3 Stylus.

G3 Stylus is revealed as a new device part of the G3 premium lineup, which at the moment only includes G3 and its smaller brother, G3 Beat, the last of which was announced last month. What else do we know about it?

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Xiaomi leads the smartphone market in China

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Xiaomi's name may mean close to nothing in western markets, but the smartphone maker is well-known in Asia for its powerful yet affordable handsets. Take the new Mi 4 flagship, for instance. It rivals HTC's One (M8) in the specs department, but can be had for less than what Google asks for its Nexus 5. There's a similar story with other Xiaomi-made devices, that are proving to be extremely popular with consumers in China.

Xiaomi's smartphones are so popular in China that, in the second quarter of the year, they allowed the manufacturer to overtake worldwide leader Samsung in the local Asian market, according to a new report from analyst firm Canalys. Xiaomi, which is a Chinese vendor, was responsible for 14 percent of smartphone shipments in the country, surpassing Samsung, Lenovo, Yulong and Huawei. The combined market share of top worldwide vendors Samsung and Apple was just 18 percent in China in Q2 2014, as the two were able to ship just 20 million units put together.

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Mozilla Developer Network site leaks 76,000 user email addresses

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The latest organization to suffer an embarrassing security failure is open source developer Mozilla. The company whose mission is "to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web" has, it seems, been a bit more open than usual.

It has admitted to leaking the email addresses of 76,000 developers. This began happening on June 23rd when what Mozilla calls a "data sanitization process" on the Mozilla Developer Network site began failing and carried on for a month unnoticed.

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ImBatch 3.0 adds Curves tool, image filtering

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High Motion Software has unveiled ImBatch 3.0, an interesting update to its free-for-personal-use image batch processing tool.

The headline addition is the Curves task, a versatile and configurable way to adjust image colors.

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Which people make the best remote bosses?

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It's reckoned that more than 60 percent of employers offer some form of remote working in order to increase employee satisfaction and retention rates.

But what type of boss makes for a harmonious telecommuting experience? Online forms specialist Formstack has put together an infographic evaluating the traits of different types of manager and how they lend themselves to working with remote teams.

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recALL displays forgotten email and FTP passwords

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Setting up a new email or FTP client can take a while, especially if you’ve lots of accounts. Not only will you have to look up server names, ports, security and other details, but you’ll also have to try and remember all your various passwords.

If you didn’t make a note of yours originally (and you don’t use exactly the same password for everything), there are a few tools which might be able to help. NirSoft’s Mail PassView is one of the best known.

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Amazon Fire phone -- Android done differently [Review]

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Amazon's Fire phone does not have access to Google's Play Store. I want to get that out of the way first, as it may be a consumer's biggest concern about the phone. However, that said, it might not be a big deal. In fact, it is quite refreshing to experience Google's Linux-based operating system without Google. In my opinion it is dangerous for Android to become synonymous with Google's store.

With Android, you do have the ability to add 3rd party stores without rooting or hacking. Unfortunately, on most devices, only Google's Play Store comes installed. While I have seen some devices come with the Amazon Appstore preloaded too, make no mistake, the Play Store is always the main focus. The Fire phone bucks that trend and puts Amazon's store into the spotlight and that is not a bad thing. Actually, as I will explain later, you can add additional app stores and even install some of Google's apps.

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Researcher claims passenger planes are vulnerable to cyber attack

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A cyber security researcher has worked out ways to hack into passenger jets through the plane's Wi-Fi and inflight entertainment systems.

If confirmed, the claim could prompt a comprehensive restructure of aircraft security, and cast new scrutiny on the way aircraft electronic security has been managed in the past.

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5 steps to the perfect mobile web strategy

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It's not commonplace, but every so often, businesses tell me that their mobile traffic is still too low for them to make it a priority over the traditional PC web. In truth, the low traffic is probably a direct correlation to the poor user experience their visitors have when accessing a non-optimized website via a mobile device. It's a vicious circle, but things have to change.

Not having a mobile web strategy for a consumer-facing company means you're ultimately moving against the market and no business should be swimming against such a powerful tide as that means being left behind. So what is a good mobile web strategy? Here are five key questions you need to answer to know if your website is mobile ready.

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China bans Kaspersky and Symantec antivirus

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China has come down hard on US-based security company Symantec and its Russian counterpart Kaspersky, removing it from the list of approved antivirus providers in Chinese government computer systems.

The news comes amid a move from the Beijing government to limit Chinese dependency on foreign technology firms.

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Microsoft's '3 Reasons Windows 8.1 is better' won’t convince anyone to switch

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Microsoft continues to try and change opinions regarding its tiled OS, and today the company introduces a new video showcasing three reasons Windows 8.1 is better. It doesn’t say what it’s better than -- Windows 8, possibly, or Windows 7 -- but it does show how you can use Windows the way you want.

The minute long video is fast paced, colorful, and set to a pumping music track ('Sassy Gang' by Mike Sampey and Mark O'Grady). Frankly if you’ve never used the tiled OS before you probably won’t have a great idea of what is going on, but the flashy captions might help you make some sense of things. As for the three reasons? They are, in order, The Desktop ("it comes up automagically!"), The Apps (which you can pin to the desktop or the Start screen), and The Navigation (the ease with which you can switch between desktop and full screen apps).

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HGST Research shows off world's fastest SSD with cheetah-like performance

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Faster is almost always better. While computer enthusiasts are continually trying to get an edge and squeeze out more performance, they are often stopped by one thing -- a lack of money. Yes, in the computer world, you must pay to play and hardware is not always cheap. Often manufacturers will trot out something so remarkable (and expensive), that nerds start drooling and dreaming about owning it, but never actually achieve it.

Today, HGST shows off what it is calling the world's fastest SSD. Unfortunately, it is so fast that most people will not be able to afford it any time soon. With that said, it is only a tech-demo for now, but today's demos are tomorrow's consumer products. Are you ready for a cheetah-like SSD in your system?

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Wunderlist 3 adds real-time sync and refreshed design, drops support for Windows desktop

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6 Wunderkinder GmBH has unveiled Wunderlist 3.0, a major new release of its to-do list manager for Mac. Also available for iOS and Android, the biggest surprise with this new release is the lack of a Windows update from version 2.

For the platforms still supported, Wunderlist 3.0 comes with the promise of a revamped real-time sync engine, major redesign and the promise of over 60 improvements.

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FBackup comes with promise of faster backup performance, improved statistics view

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Softland has released FBackup 5.1 and Backup4all 5.1, minor new versions of its free and paid-for Windows backup products.

Both programs, which offer file-based backup and extended functionality via plug-ins, come with the promise of improved backup performance and more detailed statistics view, along with other minor improvements and bug fixes.

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Amazon Fire TV adds new services, including MLB and Disney

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Baseball season is in full swing and marching steadily towards the playoffs, and football is now in pre-season, making it a great time to have easy access to sports information. Now those who have joined, or will soon join, the Amazon ecosystem with a Fire TV, are going to get just that, along with other services as well.

The retailer announces the addition of MLB.tv, WATCH Disney Channel, WATCH Disney Jr., Animal Planet Live, and the WWE Network. "Customers are loving the selection on their Fire TV, telling us how easy it is to watch their favorite movies and TV shows, listen to music, and play games in their living room. And because of that, developers continue to bring great apps to the platform, with app selection more than doubling since launch", says Steve Rabuchin, Vice President of the Amazon Appstore.

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