Articles about Android

Not all nerds are fat, but a good amount of us are. It's no surprise that sitting on our butts staring at a computer screen while drinking Mountain Dew and eating Doritos can pack on the pounds.

While technology has taken many a computer nerd down the path of poor health, it doesn't have to be that way. In fact, technology can actually be good for you. Case in point, fitness wearables like the ones from Fitbit can help you gain control of your life by tracking your activity. Today, HTC, AT&T and Fitbit are launching a promotion that will save you $50 when buying an HTC One M8 and a Fitbit fitness tracker.

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Data organization wars have claimed a victim. Springpad, the notebook service designed to help users "get inspired, get organized, get more done" is to close. After six years of helping people store notes, recipes, project ideas and more, Springpad will close in just over a month. The world of note taking tools, managers and general information organizers has become crowded. The likes of Evernote, OneNote and even Google Keep have all been vying for attention in recent years, and there are only so many users to go around.

The closure rumors started last night with the Verge citing the oft-mentioned "person familiar with the company's plans", but now it has been confirmed. In a blog post the Springpad team confirms what hundreds of thousands of users hoped and prayed would turn out to be untrue -- as of June 25, the service will cease to function. At this stage no reasons are being given for the closure, but it will leave users scrabbling to find a new home for their data.

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Privacy. It's something that we're all concerned about, particularly online. Facebook is one of many companies that comes in for scrutiny and criticism for the way it handles user privacy, and there have long been complaints about the fact that statuses and uploaded photos are made publicly accessible by default. Today that changes. After years of pestering, Facebook has listened to its user base and changed the default visibility setting to "Friends only". At least this is the case for brand new users.

Anyone signing up for a new Facebook account -- can there be many people left who do not yet have one? -- will be able to avoid accidentally sharing private photos with the world. "Going forward, when new people join Facebook, the default audience of their first post will be set to Friends. Previously, for most people, it was set to Public," says Facebook in a blog post. The first time a post is made, users will be asked whether it should be made public or limited to a smaller audience. If no selection is made, it will default to Friends.

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Reverse engineering apps is an interesting field of work. On one hand, it can be used by software engineers to determine how an app works so they can copy it. On the other, the method can be used by those with malicious intent to track down weaknesses that can then be exploited. But there's also a third hand. Reverse engineering can also be used to highlight security problems with a view to not only alerting those affected, but also addressing the problem.

Researchers at Include Security, whilst practicing their reverse engineering skills, turned their attention to the Outlook.com app for Android and discovered a potentially worrisome security issue.

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Today is a day of celebration for fans of Any.Do -- the todo list and task manager for iOS, Android and Chrome. Some four years after its inception -- and after many, many demands from the service's user base -- Any.Do has, at long, long last, gained a web app. Founders Omer Perchik, Yoni Lindenfeld, and Itay Kahana have successfully avoided a brouhaha from users by finally delivering what they describe as "the number one most requested feature by our users".

Any.Do has proved incredibly successful on mobile platforms -- as well as in Google's web browser -- amassing more than 10 million users. Perchik says: "Web is a huge market we haven't even touched yet. There's a world of people who haven't considered us because they need a full web experience, right on their computer screens" of the launch. "We're conquering mobile, now it's time to break out in a broader market".

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As a trained Sociologist, I am always analyzing my surroundings. One of my particular interests is the plight of the working poor. It breaks my heart to see people toil away for low pay, while struggling to pay bills. Even sadder, these hard-working people are often taken advantage of by "pay-day" lenders -- they offer an extremely high-interest loan which targets the poor who cannot make ends meet.

Luckily, technology can be developed to solve many of the world's problems, including the pains of the workers living paycheck to paycheck. Yes, a new app for Android and iOS, called Activehours, is aiming to solve this problem.

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Since the mobile universe was first split into the great hulking behemoths of iOS and Android, smartphone users have been asking "How can I run Apple apps on my Android device?"

Well, this could be the answer you're looking for. A team of US computer scientists has announced the development and successful testing of software that allows Android and Apple apps to run side-by-side on the same devices.

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Anyone who regularly reads my handset reviews will know how important the Motorola Moto G has been. Since last November it has overshadowed every phone aiming at the £150 price range, and quite a lot priced a fair bit higher. Now Motorola wants the Moto E to achieve the same kind of dominance -- this time at the entry-level end of the phone market. The Moto E can be yours for £89 SIM-free.

By modern standards this is a small handset -- its screen is only 4.3-inches. It is amazing how much the landscape has changed over the last few years, so that a 4.3-inch phone seems small and 5-inch feels like the optimum size.

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Going forward, if you're buying apps (or other content) from the Google Play store, you'll be able to use your PayPal account to pay for your digital goods.

Previously, you could use a credit or debit card (of course), gift cards, or your network if you're on T-Mobile (EE) in the UK, but now PayPal is another option for those splashing cash in Google's funfair of apps.

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You may remember the OnePlus One as one of the most hyped smartphones of the year thus far. That is for two big reasons: first, it ships with top-of-the-line specifications and, second, the One manages to do that at a price lower than what Google asks for its impressive Nexus 5. (The fact that it looks quite nice does not hurt either.)

On top of that, OnePlus has also employed a clever trick to drum up people's interest in its first smartphone before the official launch. The One will follow a different path to availability, as the company will only allow those who have received an invite to buy it. After all, the exclusive launch adds to the appeal, does it not?

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The past week was one dominated by privacy and security related stories. A court ruling in Oracle's favor means that the company is able to claim copyright protection for APIs subsequently used by Google in Android. The long term effects of the ruling are yet to be understood, but they could certainly be far-reaching. Privacy hit the headlines again as SanDisk works on a self-encrypting SSD, and Google was told that users can request that information about them be removed from search results -- of course it didn't take long for the requests to start rolling in.

New research shows that there has been an increase in online suspicion, indicated by a huge increase in the levels of encryption used. The UK government approved the use of Samsung KNOX devices which could help to allay fears about BYOD. Google announced GAME -- Google Apps Message Encryption -- to provide end-to-end encryption for email outside of the Gmail ecosystem.

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Many people think that printers are a dying technology. Well, to a certain degree those people are slightly right, but mostly wrong. As time marches on and smartphones become more ubiquitous, a need to print lessens. For instance, people are displaying airline boarding passes on their smartphones rather than print it. Me? I still print. For something like a boarding pass, I have too much anxiety that a glitch or dead battery would impede my travels. Just yesterday, I bought concert tickets and printed them -- the venue requires it.

So, as much as people want to declare the printer dead, they are wrong. We still do not have paperless offices in the enterprise, and that was expected a decade ago. It's not happening anytime soon. With that said, Android now offers native printing in KitKat and Epson is pledging its support, with over 60 compatible devices.

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The market is flooded with tablets of various sizes and shapes. It is easy to lose track of them all. Samsung is one of the biggest offenders. The manufacturer makes so many tablets, that it is hard to distinguish all the features from within its offerings alone.

Today, Samsung is delivering yet another tablet, but this time it has a very focused market -- K-12 education. Yes, Samsung announces the Galaxy Tab 4 Education and your kids may be using this for learning very soon.

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Public sector workers in the UK will soon be able to use Samsung handsets after the UK government gave the greenlight to devices running Samsung KNOX. The Communications and Electronics Security Group (CESG) tested the KNOX platform and the government has now published End User Devices (EUD) Security Guidance for Samsung KNOX on certain handsets and tablets. It's not clear whether this paves the way for a new wave of BYOD for government workers, but it is certainly a possibility.

Samsung is pleased with the announcement, and Injong Rhee, Senior Vice President of KNOX Business, IT and Mobile Communications Division, says "Samsung devices with KNOX are already extensively deployed globally across the private sector but now with this significant recognition, government agencies across the UK will be able to adopt Samsung KNOX enabled Galaxy smartphones and tablets setting the scene for other governments to follow".

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Not too long ago, a 4.5-inch display was considered to be on the large side for a smartphone. Manufacturers which dared to go past it were few and far between. Yet here we are today, in a time when that screen size only appears to be associated with small versions of flagships, like HTC's new One mini 2 which is the younger brother of the One (M8). (I wonder what the guys and gals from HTC were thinking right before they decided on the name One mini 2.)

The One mini 2 comes with similar features as its bigger brother, like the Sense 6 user interface, the BoomSound audio and BlinkFeed. It has nothing to be embarrassed about, at least as far as specs go, as HTC uses decent components that should ensure it does not feel underwhelming in daily usage.

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