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Samsung’s JK Shin confirms Galaxy Note 8 will make an appearance at Mobile World Congress Click here for full story…
INFOGRAPHIC: Do U Text?
Published on MakeUseOf | shared via feedly mobile
If I had to analyse my phone and decide what activity I did the most, it would be sending SMS text messages. Actually making voice calls wouldn’t even come close. Over the past year, my iPhone has become pretty much my texting machine. And it seems I am not alone. Texting is on the increase – 8 trillion text messages last year, turning it into a multi-billion dollar business. And it is is bringing with it many advantages as well as many disadvantages.
Our infographic today, courtesy of Online Schools.com gives us some stats on the texting phenomenon. Texting is introducing new words into the English language but is it coming at the cost of young people not learning how to write properly? Is “gr8″ taking the place of “great”? Or “pls” instead of “please”? Sometimes these abbreviations can be excused as a productivity tactic, to save time when chatting to someone. But used long term? Could that make people forget the proper words?
Let us know in the comments what you think of our infographic today. Do you agree with it? Do you find yourself making up new words in text messages, and forgetting the real word? Could this have a long term impact on the way you and other people learn to read and write? Let us know in the comments ASAP. And remember not to give us TMI because we should be BFF.
Infographic Source: Online Schools.com
Image Credit: New Message On Mobile Phone via Shutterstock
The post INFOGRAPHIC: Do U Text? appeared first on MakeUseOf.
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Robotica 2012 Italian Trade Fair for Humanoid and Service Robots
Published on adafruit industries blog | shared via feedly mobile

Check out this interesting international humanoid and service robots trade fair that took place near Milan, Italy: Robotica 2012. A Google Image search for “Robotica 2012″ delivers some pretty interesting photos of what was going on there and who was attending!
From the press release:
Robotica 2012, the only Italian trade fair event in the field of humanoid and service robots, which took place from 7 to 9 November at fieramilano, Rho, was visited by 6,300 operators, who determined the important success of this fast growing event.
The fourth edition of Robotica had 66 exhibitors, 56 of which Italian and 10 international. Compared to the 2011 edition, the number of exhibitors more than doubled, while the number of international companies increased by as much as 150%, exceeding 15% of the total number (9.7% in 2011). As per European Community rules, Robotica can therefore now be called an international fair. Countries represented were United Kingdom, France, Japan, Russia, Switzerland and Poland. This year, the total exhibition area of the event was 4,400 square metres, more than double that of last year.
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Today’s launch of the Nexus 4 and Android 4.2 comes with a bit of sad news. Android Open Source Project technical lead Jean-Baptiste Queru announced today that the Nexus S and Motorola XOOM will not be updated to Android 4.2. Both devices will finish out their days on Android 4.1.2, just like the Nexus One was labeled as “too-old” to be upgraded to Android 4.0 last year.Google isn’t revealing the reason behind this decision, but we have a feeling that hardware limitations and the age of the devices have a lot to do with it. Android 4.1 runs quite well on both devices, but many users have complained that the latest update has significantly slowed down their devices. The Motorola XOOM was never a huge success, and most people who purchased the Nexus S at launch have likely upgraded to a newer phone by now.However, not all hope is lost. A year after the Nexus One was abandoned, the development community is still working hard to make sure that the device is running on the latest version of Android. We have no doubt that the same will be true for the Nexus S and Motorola XOOM.Source: Google Groups
via Google drops Nexus S and Motorola XOOM from AOSP, Android 4.2 not on roadmap | Android and Me.
Embed YouTube as an Audio Player
Learn how to turn the standard YouTube video player into an audio player and embed it in your website using simple CSS.
A popular option would be that you extract the audio portion of that YouTube video and then use the Google MP3 player to embed that MP3 fil into your website. This will work but YouTube is very likely to have a problem with your approach.
The other approach could be CSS based where you embed the regular YouTube video player and then use the magic of CSS styles to hide the video inside the embedded player. See demo:
This internally renders the YouTube player using the IFRAME player and should therefore work on both desktop (Flash) and mobile (HTML5) browsers.
Without boring you with the technical details, here’s the little HTML code that turn the YouTube video player into an audio player. Simply replace the youtubeID with the ID of your YouTube video and you are done.
youtubeID?rel=0"> </iframe> </div> </div>
The YouTube logo inside then player, when clicked, will transport you to the original video hosted on the YouTube website.
[categories android, jelly bean]
Introducing Android 4.2, A New and Improved Jelly Bean
Published on Android Developers Blog | shared via feedly mobile
Posted by Angana Ghosh, Product Manager in Android, and Dirk Dougherty, Android Developer Relations Team
Today we are making Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean) SDK platform available for download. Below are some of the highlights of Android 4.2, API level 17.
Performance
We’ve worked with our partners to run Renderscript computation directly in the GPU on the Nexus 10, a first for any mobile computation platform.
New ways to engage users
Users can now place interactive lock screen widgets directly on their device lock screens, for instant access to favorite apps and content. With just a small update, you can adapt any app widget to run on the lock screen. Daydream is an interactive screensaver mode that users can encounter when their devices are charging or docked in a desk dock. You can create interactive daydreams that users display in this mode, and they can include any type of content.
New interaction and entertainment experiences
Android 4.2 introduces platform support for external displays that goes beyond mirroring. Your apps can now target unique content to any number of displays attached to an Android device.
Enhancements for international users
To help you create better apps for users in languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian, Android 4.2 includes native RTL support, including layout mirroring. With native RTL support, you can deliver the same great app experience to all of your users with minimal extra work. Android 4.2 also includes a variety of font and character optimizations for Korean, Japanese, Indic, Thai, Arabic and Hebrew writing systems.
To get started developing and testing, download the Android 4.2 Platform from the Android SDK Manager. For a complete overview of what’s new, take a look at the Android 4.2 platform highlights or read more of the details in the API overview.
Join the discussion on
+Android Developers
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Apple Typo Touts Implausibly Thin iPad 4
Published on The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com | shared via feedly mobile
When it comes to gadgets, we all know that thin is in, but this is just ridiculous.
According to Apple’s website, the latest version of the regular-sized iPad, unveiled in October, measures a wispy 0.37 millimeters. That’s approximately a quarter of the thickness of a U.S. penny, or three pieces of paper stacked on top of one another. But if you’ve ever seen a fourth-generation iPad, you know for a fact the device is thicker than the spec printed on Apple’s site. Woops!
It seems Apple has let a typo slip through onto at least one part of its website, as pointed out by an eagle-eyed user on Reddit.
Read More…
More on iPad
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updated 12:03 a.m. ET, Mon., Sep. 20, 2010
Facebook denies plans to build its own phone
Facebook Mobile
Facebook says it is working on projects to improve mobile phone integration but isn’t planning to build its own phone.
Alex Dobuzinskis
Reuters
Social networking website Facebook said on Sunday it is pushing deeper into the mobile phone sector but denied an Internet report that it will build its own phone.
Privately held Facebook has more than 500 million users worldwide and the company already has applications on a number of mobile phones that tie into its social networking website.
But Jaime Schopflin, a spokesman for Facebook, said the privately held company “is not building a phone.” Facebook’s current projects include “deeper integrations with some manufacturers,” he said.
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“Our view is that almost all experiences would be better if they were social, so integrating deeply into existing platforms and operating systems is a good way to enable this,” Schopflin said in a statement.
In a report on Sunday, the website TechCrunch.com said a source with knowledge of the project revealed that Facebook is secretly building software for a phone and working with a third party to build the hardware.
TechCrunch.com said Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and core functions of a mobile phone, which it can only do if it controls the phone’s operating system.
Facebook, for its part, cited Facebook Connect, a service to allow members to log onto third-party websites, for Apple’s iPhone, and contact syncing on its iPhone application as projects it has already undertaken.
In May, Facebook also launched a stripped-down version of its social networking website designed for mobile phones with limited bandwidth Internet connections.
“The bottom line is that whenever we work on a deep integration, people want to call it a ‘Facebook Phone’ because that’s such an attractive soundbite, but building phones is just not what we do,” Schopflin said.
Facebook’s denial comes after Google Inc last year dismissed media reports about its plans to build a phone, and then later came out with the Nexus One.
At the time, the company said it was focusing on developing its Android mobile operating software, which works on a multitude of mobile phones developed by other companies such as Motorola Inc’s hot-selling Droid device.
But Google eventually did release in January its own smartphone called the Nexus One, manufactured by Taiwan-based HTC Corp. Google sold the device itself through an online store, but in May announced it was closing that sales outlet and said the store had not lived up to expectations.