Orbotix: These guys really want you to play with their balls

When you first walk into the Orbotix office in downtown Boulder, it?s abundantly clear that these guys like robots. A lot. Probably almost as much as TNW?s Courtney Boyd Myers. What isn?t so evident, though, is the grand scale of what the company is doing with its first consumer product, the Sphero.

Oh sure, it?s a really cool toy. Essentially it?s a two-wheeled, highly-unstable robot that sits inside of a ball, akin to a miniature version of what you?d see a hamster running in. But there?s more to this stocking-fodder that meets the eye as the Orbotix team has found out that people might love toys, but they really love games.

First off, have a look at how cool this thing really is:

I spent some time talking with Orbotix CEO Paul Berberian about the concept to completion of Sphero and what was coming next. Interestingly, a robotic ball was nowhere near the first idea.

Berberian tells me that Sphero was launched from the thought that people would want to play with a toy that was dead simple to use, but addictive. Obviously this is a recipe for success, but getting to the point of deciding to make a ball was a longer process that involved a lot of ideas but no products. Finally, settling on the thought that everybody would love to play with a ball that they could control from the phones that they already had, Sphero was born.

So you take a rather unstable robot, allow it to be controlled over Bluetooth from any Android or iOS device and then stabilize it by sticking it into a ball. What you get is something that?s dead simple to use, but challenging enough for lasting entertainment value. Oh, and you can also control a single ball from multiple devices, opening even more options.

But if all that you could do was roll it around on the floor, the entertainment value would fade rather quickly. With that in mind, the team went to work on some games. There?s a Pong-like game, wherein the LED on the ball starts out green, you flick the screen to roll the ball toward your opponent and then they have to flick it back when the LED is yellow, before turning red. As simple as it might sound, it was fun enough for Berberian and I to play for a good half hour before moving to the next.

The other that I got to play was an early version of a golf-like game. With 3 selectable ?clubs?, each of them has a hard-stop limit to how far they will cause the ball to travel. Setting up rings or marks on the floor, you use the appropriate club to get the ball to the mark. As easy as it might sound, it was nearly as challenging as golf, but with more laughter and less cursing.

These are just a couple of the games that are currently being in development by Orbotix, with more to come as the product gets closer to its Q4 2011 release. There?s also an open SDK for a beta developer program so if you have the chops and some ideas you can make Sphero do all sorts of things via iOS or Android.

You can reserve your Sphero now, and many already have. Recharging will happen via an inductive cradle, so there are no batteries to change out of the sealed unit. Berberian tells me that they?ll run around $130 US, and should be available in time for Christmas this year.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2011/05/23/orbotix-these-guys-really-want-you-to-play-with-their-balls/

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Sony: PSN security breach cleanup to cost $171 million

It's been a dire year for Sony with the combined disruption from the Japanese earthquake and the damage caused by the PSN hack. The company is due to release a financial report on Thursday, but on a preliminary financial update for its fiscal year 2010, which ended on March 31, Sony noted it now expects to post a $3.1 billion loss instead of the $857 million in profits forecasted back in February.

Most of the loss is due to charges associated with U.S. GAAP (generally accepted accounting practices) rules.

The earthquake and tsunami occurred just three weeks before the end of the financial year and thus didn't have a large impact on the company's global financial performance for fiscal 2010. According to reports, Sony estimates a ¥22 billion ($269 million) drop in sales and ¥17 billion ($208 million) in quake-related costs in the now-finished period.

Things aren't looking too hot for the next twelve months, though. For the fiscal year to end on March 31, 2012 the company expects profits to be off by a whopping ¥150 billion ($1.8 billion), most of it coming from idling factories in Japan and rebuilding capacity in the wake of the natural disaster that hit the country.

Having occurred in late April, the PlayStation Network attack and subsequent data theft fall outside the just-finished 2010 period, but the company nonetheless addressed the impact of the hack saying it will cost about ¥14 billion ($171 million) and show up in the next fiscal year's results. That figure contains all of the investigation, cleanup and insurance needed to resolve the issue, as well as the updates made to the network to prevent further occurrences, but it doesn't include costs associated with lawsuits made against the company, as the outcome is hard to predict.

Furthermore, those losses could become even larger if identify theft or credit card fraud is detected as a result of the PSN security breach -- which hasn't been the case so far. The company is expected to provide more details later this week. Despite the setbacks the company recently said it's still on track to launch the NGP later this year.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/43906-sony-psn-security-breach-cleanup-to-cost-171-million.html

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Obama Presses Israel to Make ?Hard Choices?

Mr. Obama, speaking before a conference of the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee, offered familiar assurances that the United States? commitment to Israel?s long-term security was ?ironclad.? But citing the rising political upheaval near Israel?s borders, he presented his peace plan as the best chance Israel has to avoid growing isolation.

?We cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace,? Mr. Obama said. The world, he said, ?is moving too fast.?

Administration officials said it would be up to Mr. Obama, during an economic summit in Paris next weekend, to try to talk his European counterparts out of endorsing Palestinian statehood in a coming United Nations vote, a prospect that would deeply embarrass Israel. Some French officials have already indicated that they are leaning toward such an endorsement.

?He basically said, ?I can continue defending you to the hilt, but if you give me nothing to work with, even America can?t save you,? ? said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and a fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group.

The appearance by Mr. Obama on Sunday punctuated a tense week in which he and Mr. Netanyahu made their separate cases about Palestinian statehood to American audiences. Mr. Netanyahu will address the same group on Monday and will speak before Congress on Tuesday at the invitation of Republican lawmakers.

In his speech, Mr. Obama did not directly confront Mr. Netanyahu, who, while seated next to him at the White House last Friday, rejected the proposal Mr. Obama made a day earlier that negotiations use Israel?s 1967 borders as a starting point.

Mr. Obama?s decision to stick to his position, albeit with strong reassurances about America?s lasting bond with Israel, is a risky one politically. Mr. Obama is just starting a re-election campaign, and Republicans are doing what they can to present themselves to Jewish voters as more reliable protectors of Israel than the Democrats.

Republicans moved swiftly to criticize his Middle East proposal. ?The U.S. ought not to be trying to push Israel into a deal that?s not good for Israel,? the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on ?Fox News Sunday.?

Administration officials said Mr. Obama chose to confront Israel on the stalled peace negotiations after his aides calculated that given the historic upheaval under way in the Arab world, the United States and Israel would both benefit from being seen as taking bold steps toward ending the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians.

As Mr. Obama himself pointed out, his theme in the speech last Thursday was not extraordinary. American presidents, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have consistently instructed their foreign policy aides to pursue an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians using the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps, as a basis for talks.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, in fact, made such a proposal to the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in 2008, as the two sides rushed to complete a peace deal before Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert left office.

But the 1967 border issue has always been privately understood, not spoken publicly, and certainly not publicly endorsed by a sitting American president.

When Mr. Obama did so last Thursday, he unleashed a furious response from Mr. Netanyahu. The prime minister?s office put out a statement in advance of his meeting with Mr. Obama the next day in which Mr. Netanyahu said he expected to hear certain assurances from the president.

?That was Bibi over the top,? one administration official said Saturday, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. ?That?s not how you address the president of the United States.?

Mr. Obama addressed his critics on Sunday, saying, ?What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately.?

Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 23, 2011

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Mitch McConnell as the Senate majority leader.

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Square payment app updated to add shelves, item variety and beauty

Square CEO Jack Dorsey will most likely be announcing something interesting about the payment system for mobile devices 10 a.m. PST on Monday at Techcrunch Disrupt. Whatever that announcement is it will no doubt include the news that the Square payment app has been updated to version 2.0.

The iPad update to Square [App Store, free] brings the addition of shelves to place your items on for easy organization and more options to control item variety. Descriptors such as small or chocolate can now be added to items to create various varieties of an item, which is good for businesses who sell many versions of a single product. The iPhone version has also gotten a nice facelift, improving on the look and feel of the app a bit.

These updates may or may not figure in to the announcement later today but improvements to the iPad interface are welcome as it was previously not much more than a scaled-up version of the iPhone UI. This gets us that much more excited about the possibilities that Square?s announcement will have something to do with Apple.

The Square payment app uses a small Square payment device to take credit card payments on mobile devices like the iPhone, iPad and Android phones. At the moment the Android version of the Square app does not seem to have received the same updates.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/05/23/square-payment-app-updated-to-add-shelves-item-variety-and-beauty/

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Samsung Galaxy S II Android Smartphone Review

Samsung's first generation Galaxy S flagship smartphone, and the myriad variants it spawned, helped drive Samsung to the top of the heap in the Android world. It was fast, had a great display, and offered a solid user experience in general.

Samsung's second time at bat, however, promises bigger and better things. The new Samsung Galaxy S II is even larger, yet much thinner, and features a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display and well over twice the processing power of the original.

With HSPA+ data support, slick new user interface features, and Google's Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS, the Galaxy S II establishes a new high-water mark that will force all other devices to scramble to stay afloat. For now, at least.


Hardware

Samsung's Galaxy S II is a large device, thanks to its 4.3-inch WVGA (800 x 480 pixel) touchscreen display. But the fact that it measures only 8.5mm in thickness makes it much easier to palm than competing devices with similarly large displays.

The display itself is a brilliant Super AMOLED Plus model that improves upon an already good series of Samsung displays. It is very readable in direct sunlight, offers improved sharpness over older Super AMOLED displays, and puts out colors that pack plenty of visual punch.

The rest of the phone, which measures 125.5mm x 66mm x 8.5mm (4.9in x 2.6in x .3in) in size and weighs 116.3g (4.1oz), is also good looking. The front features a hardware home button that is flanked by touch sensitive menu and back keys below the display and a forward facing camera sitting above it. The rear cover wraps around the 8 megapixel camera and LED flash of the Galaxy S II. It is nicely textured and can be removed to reveal the 1650mAh battery, the SIM card slot, and the microSD memory card slot. The phone features 16GB of internal storage, and no microSD card is supplied in the box.

The edges of the device are home to the volume control, power/standby button, 3.5mm headphone jack, and the uncovered micro-USB port. The design is simple, and somewhat Apple inspired, perhaps, but it is very workable and practical. And I just love the touchscreen.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/review/401-samsung-galaxy-s-ii/

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Microsoft Wants to Rule the White Spaces

The first "white spaces" devices, which thread long-range wireless data signals through gaps in TV spectrum, will start to appear later this year.  Microsoft is bidding to play a central role in how they operate.

The coming devices are expected to include home routers to bring Internet to the home and even mobile devices such as phones or tablets. To avoid interfering with TV broadcasts, they will check with a government-appoved online database to learn of available white spaces between channels in their area. Microsoft has applied to the FCC to become an approved administrator of such a system, built using technology developed by its research wing, dubbed SenseLess. This would give the company an influential stake in the world's first attempt to find a new way to free up the airwaves?an approach that is likely to be adopted worldwide. Google and eight other companies have already been granted permission to operate white spaces databases, but they have revealed little of their technology.

Microsoft's system was recently demonstrated in Las Vegas, where it enabled an Xbox games console to get online using a prototype white spaces device made by startup Adaptrum.

TV spectrum signals have a longer wavelength than Wi-Fi or cellular signals, which means TV spectrum can support longer-range data connections. Microsoft's trial white spaces network, on its Redmond, Washington, campus, can provide high-speed Internet at a range of over a mile.

To use the system, a device first supplies its location to the database, using a frequency that is known to be permanently free in that area. The system then tells the device which other chunks of spectrum are available to use at that time. SenseLess combines knowledge of every licensed TV signal in the U.S. with detailed topographic maps and models to determine how signals dissipate over distance and terrain.

Development of SenseLess has been led by Microsoft researcher Ranveer Chandra. His collaborator, Rohan Murty of Harvard University, drove 15,000 miles around Washington state to gather data that tested SenseLess's predictions against the real world. "We had zero false positives," says Chandra. "Never did we say that a channel was free but was actually occupied."

Trials of SenseLess have also shown that devices do not need to have a very accurate location fix, says Chandra?good news, because many white spaces devices will need to work indoors, where GPS is less accurate. "With the right models, a device can be only accurate to within 0.6 miles and lose access to less than 2 percent of spectrum," says Chandra. A description of the SenseLess system won a best paper award at the IEEE Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks conference in Aachen, Germany, earlier this month.

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The Invisible iPhone

Over time, using your smart-phone touch screen becomes second nature, to the point where you can even do some tasks without looking. Researchers in Germany are now working on a system that would let you perform such actions without even holding the phone?instead you'd tap your palm, and the movements would be interpreted by an "imaginary phone" system that would relay the request to your actual phone.

The concept relies on a depth-sensitive camera to pick up the tapping and sliding interactions on a palm,  software to analyze the video, and a wireless radio to send the instructions back to the iPhone. Patrick Baudisch, professor of computer science at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, says the imaginary phone prototype "serves as a shortcut that frees users from the necessity to retrieve the actual physical device."

Baudisch and his team envision someone doing dishes when his smart phone rings. Instead of quickly drying his hands and fumbling to answer, the imaginary phone lets him simply slide a finger across his palm to answer it remotely.

The imaginary phone project, developed by Baudisch and his team, which includes Hasso Plattner Institute students Sean Gustafson and Christian Holz, is reminiscent of a gesture-based interface called SixthSense developed by Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry of MIT, but it differs in a couple of significant ways. First, there are no new gestures to learn?the invisible phone concept simply transfers the iPhone screen onto a hand. Second, there's no feedback, unlike SixthSense, which uses a projector to provide an interface on any surface. Lack of visual feedback limits the imaginary phone, but it isn't intended to completely replace the device, just to make certain interactions more convenient.

Last year, Baudisch and Gustafson developed an interface in which a wearable camera captures gestures that a person makes in the air and translates them to drawings on a screen.

For the current project, the researchers used a depth camera similar to the one used in Microsoft's Kinect for Xbox, but bulkier and positioned on a tripod. (Ultimately, a smaller, wearable depth camera could be used.) The camera "subtracts" the background and tracks the finger position on the palm. It works well in various lighting conditions, including direct sunlight. Software interprets finger positions and movements and correlates it to the position of icons on a person's iPhone. A Wi-Fi radio transmits these movements to the phone.

In a study to be presented at the User Interface Software and Technology conference in October, the researchers found that participants could accurately recall the position of about two-thirds of their iPhone apps on a blank phone and with similar accuracy on their palm. The position of apps used more frequently was recalled with up to 80 percent accuracy.

"It's a little bit like learning to touch type on a keyboard, but without any formal system or the benefit of the feel of the keys," says Daniel Vogel, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Waterloo. Vogel wasn't involved in the research. He notes that "it's possible that voice control could serve the same purpose, but the imaginary approach would work in noisy locations and is much more subtle than announcing, 'iPhone, open my e-mail.' "

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Obama Presses Israel to Make ?Hard Choices?

Mr. Obama, speaking before a conference of the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee, offered familiar assurances that the United States? commitment to Israel?s long-term security was ?ironclad.? But citing the rising political upheaval near Israel?s borders, he presented his peace plan as the best chance Israel has to avoid growing isolation.

?We cannot afford to wait another decade, or another two decades, or another three decades, to achieve peace,? Mr. Obama said. The world, he said, ?is moving too fast.?

Administration officials said it would be up to Mr. Obama, during an economic summit in Paris next weekend, to try to talk his European counterparts out of endorsing Palestinian statehood in a coming United Nations vote, a prospect that would deeply embarrass Israel. Some French officials have already indicated that they are leaning toward such an endorsement.

?He basically said, ?I can continue defending you to the hilt, but if you give me nothing to work with, even America can?t save you,? ? said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and a fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group.

The appearance by Mr. Obama on Sunday punctuated a tense week in which he and Mr. Netanyahu made their separate cases about Palestinian statehood to American audiences. Mr. Netanyahu will address the same group on Monday and will speak before Congress on Tuesday at the invitation of Republican lawmakers.

In his speech, Mr. Obama did not directly confront Mr. Netanyahu, who, while seated next to him at the White House last Friday, rejected the proposal Mr. Obama made a day earlier that negotiations use Israel?s 1967 borders as a starting point.

Mr. Obama?s decision to stick to his position, albeit with strong reassurances about America?s lasting bond with Israel, is a risky one politically. Mr. Obama is just starting a re-election campaign, and Republicans are doing what they can to present themselves to Jewish voters as more reliable protectors of Israel than the Democrats.

Republicans moved swiftly to criticize his Middle East proposal. ?The U.S. ought not to be trying to push Israel into a deal that?s not good for Israel,? the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said on ?Fox News Sunday.?

Administration officials said Mr. Obama chose to confront Israel on the stalled peace negotiations after his aides calculated that given the historic upheaval under way in the Arab world, the United States and Israel would both benefit from being seen as taking bold steps toward ending the impasse between Israelis and Palestinians.

As Mr. Obama himself pointed out, his theme in the speech last Thursday was not extraordinary. American presidents, including George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, have consistently instructed their foreign policy aides to pursue an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians using the 1967 borders, with mutually agreed land swaps, as a basis for talks.

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, in fact, made such a proposal to the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in 2008, as the two sides rushed to complete a peace deal before Mr. Bush and Mr. Olmert left office.

But the 1967 border issue has always been privately understood, not spoken publicly, and certainly not publicly endorsed by a sitting American president.

When Mr. Obama did so last Thursday, he unleashed a furious response from Mr. Netanyahu. The prime minister?s office put out a statement in advance of his meeting with Mr. Obama the next day in which Mr. Netanyahu said he expected to hear certain assurances from the president.

?That was Bibi over the top,? one administration official said Saturday, referring to Mr. Netanyahu by his nickname. ?That?s not how you address the president of the United States.?

Mr. Obama addressed his critics on Sunday, saying, ?What I did on Thursday was to say publicly what has long been acknowledged privately.?

Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 23, 2011

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Mitch McConnell as the Senate majority leader.

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Stylish Technology Entrepreneurs: Sean Parker

This is the fourth in a series on Stylish Entrepreneurs (sponsored by Gillette!). Previous editions featured Steve Jobs and  Jack Dorsey and Kevin Rose. Today we are taking a closer look at Sean Parker.

Sean Parker has recently shot to fame because of The Social Network. Being portrayed by an actor in a movie is one thing but if that actor is none other than Justin Timberlake you can be assured of a lot of attention. And Parker deserves it. Often described as genius and one of the most promising entrepreneurs in the Internet Industry. His dress sense: smart, clearly expensive, often seen in a pinstripe suit and waiste coast, whatever the occasion.

Parker has had his hand in many companies that had an impact on our current world wide web. Remember Napster? Sure you do. How about Plaxo, Causes and Facebook? Yep, Parker was involved with all of them at one point.

So Sean Parker is wealthy, successful and interesting enough to be played by Timberlake. But how stylish is he? About as stylish as they get:


Photograph by Jonas Fredwall Karlsson for Vanity Fair

Although Parker describes the Social Network as a complete work of fiction with the quote ?I wish my life was that cool? his life is actually pretty cool. He owns a ?huge 40th-floor apartment, directly over San Francisco?s Bay Bridge?, ?a palatial (rented) New York town house. Among its many amenities: a full, mowed lawn on a patio on the third of its five floors.? and a ?collection of elegant white shoes, a closetful of Tom Ford suits, and a $100,000 Tesla electric sports car? all according to an extensive profile on him by Vanity Fair. Right, I wish MY life was that cool.

You can find more info on Wikipedia or check out his profile on Facebook. Don?t think about becoming his friend though, he already has more than 5000, which is the maximum on Facebook.

Finally a video of Parker at DLD. He doesn?t look like Timberlake at all!

Who else has made the ?Stylish Technology Entrepreneurs? cut? See our previous picks: Steve Jobs and  Jack Dorsey, Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten and Kevin Rose.

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/05/23/stylish-technology-entrepreneurs-sean-parker/

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Weekend tech reading: Llano GPU 325% faster than Sandy Bridge

AMD - Llano offers 325% better graphics performance than Sandy Bridge AMD continues to ride the GPU performance before the launch of the new mid-range processor Llano. Recently leaked documents from the company points to that the Llano-based Fusion A series will offer up to 325% better graphics performance then equivalent Intel processors based on Sandy Bridge. Nordic Hardware

Jack Wolf, who did the math behind computers, dies at 76 Jack Keil Wolf, an engineer and computer theorist whose mathematical reasoning about how best to transmit and store information helped shape the digital innards of computers and other devices that power modern society, died on May 12 at his home in the La Jolla section of San Diego. He was 76. NYT

Firefox 5 beta arrives, quietly Mozilla officially activated its beta channel on Friday, providing the first beta version that comes out of its accelerated release cycle. Don?t expect revolutionary changes. Following a first ?fake? beta build (5.0b1) that was posted on May 2, Mozilla has moved the second build (5.0b2) into the public beta channel. ConceivablyTech

Apple alumni don't fall far from the tree After selling mobile ad startup Quattro Wireless to Apple in late 2009, Lars Albright took a job helping the iPhone maker work with its community of mobile app developers. He noticed that programmers were having trouble keeping users glued to their apps. Voilà: business opportunity. Bloomberg

IT's future: Bring your own PC-tablet-phone to work CIOs should buckle up and brace themselves for a future of flexible IT as employees will be routinely bringing in their own machines and expecting the business to support them, says Tony Henderson, head of communications at UK tech sector trade body Intellect. Silicon.com

Guild Wars 2 interview We?ve already had a lengthy chat with Guild Wars 2 designers Jon Peters and Eric Flannum about how the game?s progressing but the ArenaNet devs were also kind enough to impart to us some new information on a brand new character class, the engineer. Strategy Informer

Editorial: Why Half-life 3 isn't coming soon Are you waiting for Half-life: Episode 3? Or maybe you're thinking Valve's ditched the episodic format altogether (and you'd probably be right). Regardless, don't hold your breath for a sign of life from Gordon Freeman any time soon. IGN

Google silently patches Android authentication flaw Google is implementing a server-side fix to address the authentication flaw that allows third-parties to access Android user data... eWeek

Q&A: How today's tech alienates the elderly On Silver Surfer's Day, a UK academic has blamed unnecessarily complicated user interfaces for putting older people off joining the Government-backed Race Online. PC Pro

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/43899-weekend-tech-reading-llano-gpu-325-faster-than-sandy-bridge.html

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