Instagram for Android is now available
While we knew the Android version of Instagram was coming sooner rather than later, with the release being teased just last month at South by Southwest Interactive, the exact release date wasn’t clear. Well, the day has finally arrived.
With more than 430,000 Android users on the waiting list, Instagram is now available in Google Play. The app carries with it the same features (except tilt-shift/blur) and a similar user interface to that of the iOS version. Users are able to browse friends’ photos, view the popular photos, and upload their own photos, as you would expect.
Android users will join a community of 30 million registered users, who contribute more than 5 million photos a day. More than 1 billion photos in all have been uploaded to Instagram, strictly from iOS devices. With the addition of Android devices, these numbers are sure to grow at a considerable pace.
Instagram for Android is compatible with smartphones running Android 2.2 and up. Tabletsaren’t supported at this time. Download Instagram for Android.
Are you excited to see Instagram on Android? Or are you tired of Instagram-like photos taking over your social streams? Let us know your thoughts below!
Source: CNET
Google Rain Forest
Back in August, Google announced that it was teaming up with nonprofit Foundation for a Sustainable Amazon to map a small section of the massive Rio Negro river (tributary of the Amazon) near Manaus. As expected, it took quite a while, but the results are now available for you to play with.
The area they covered is a sort of inlet west of Manaus and the coastline northwards from there. The idea is apparently just to provide a way for people to see what it’s like there without hopping on a plane and chartering a boat. The project resulted in 50,000 still pictures, which have been stitched into 50km of shore, forest, and village for your Street Viewing pleasure.
Source: TechCrunch
Reasons to Hire a Creative Web Designer
Gives you exactly what you want—the creative way!
When pursuing for a creative web design, it is important to single-out a web designer who fully understands your website goals. Creativity is not about sticking a few images together, but it’s actually about recognizing what you really want to obtain from your website and then giving you the design accordingly. A good web designer first identifies the following before starting with your website design:
Your target audience
Your website goals and objectives
Strategy for communicating your goals
Your budget
Time of project delivery
Only a creative web designer will be able to take ponder over the important aspects to be considered before designing and this is the key to great web designs.
Gives you exactly what you want—the creative way!
If you want 100% polished and bug free results, a creative web designer will be the answer. It is an ordinary practice that you find issues and errors once the website goes live, and that’s the last thing you want! Therefore, a good web designer already makes sure there are no issues and the delivery process of your website ends up smoothly and on time.
Gives you exactly what you want—the creative way!
There is a professional aura about your website when designed by a creative web designer. To be a creative designer, you have to have years of experience in the industry, for just creativity without experience is hard to give those artistic vibes you want your website to generate. Thus, a creative web designer holds extensive experience of working on a similar project like yours, which will be a great benefit in your favor. They will be able to handle your work more professionally, giving you satisfied results.
In conclusion, hiring a creative web designer is all together a positive gesture in terms of getting your website the true recognition and success that it deserves!
Source: portal-info-help-clayton-cory.ru
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Anonymous, Decentralized and Uncensored File-Sharing is Booming
The file-sharing landscape is slowly adjusting in response to the continued push for more anti-piracy tools, the final Pirate Bay verdict, and the raids and arrests in the Megaupload case. Faced with uncertainty and drastic changes at file-sharing sites, many users are searching for secure, private and uncensored file-sharing clients. Despite the image its name suggests, RetroShare is one such future-proof client.
The avalanche of negative file-sharing news over the past weeks hasn’t gone unnoticed to users and site operators.
From SOPA to Megaupload, there is a growing uncertainly about the future of sharing.
While many BitTorrent sites and cyberlockers continue to operate as usual, there is a growing group of users who are expanding their horizons to see what other means of sharing are available if the worst case scenario becomes reality.
Anonymous, decentralized and uncensored are the key and most sought-after features. For some this means signing up with a VPN to make their BitTorrent sharing more private, but new clients are also generating interest.
Earlier this month we wrote about Tribler, a decentralized (not anonymous) BitTorrent client that makes torrent sites obsolete. We’ve covered Tribler for more than half a decade, but it was only after our most recent post that it really took off with more than a hundred thousanddownloads in a few days.
But there are more file-sharing tools that are specifically built to withstand outside attacks. Some even add anonymity into the mix. RetroShare is such a private and uncensored file-sharing client, and the developers have also noticed a significant boom in users recently.
The RetroShare network allows people to create a private and encrypted file-sharing network. Users add friends by exchanging PGP certificates with people they trust. All the communication is encrypted using OpenSSL and files that are downloaded from strangers always go through a trusted friend.
In other words, it’s a true Darknet and virtually impossible to monitor by outsiders.
RetroShare founder DrBob told us that while the software has been around since 2006, all of a sudden there’s been a surge in downloads. “The interest in RetroShare has massively shot up over the last two months,” he said.
“In January our downloads tripled when interest in SOPA was at its peak. It more than doubled again in February, when cyberlockers disabled sharing or shut down entirely. At the moment we are getting 10 times more downloads than in December 2011.”
RetroShare’s downloads at Sourceforge
RetroShare’s founder believes that there is an increased need for security, privacy and freedom among file-sharers, features that are at the core of his application.
“RetroShare is about creating a private space on the Internet. A social collaboration network where you can share anything you want. A space that is free from the prying eyes of governments, corporations and advertisers. This is vitally important as our freedom on the Internet is under increasing threat,” DrBob told TorrentFreak.
“RetroShare is free from censorship: like Facebook banning ‘obscene’ breast-feeding photographs. A network that allows you to use any pseudonym, without insisting on knowing your real name. A network where you will not face the threat of jail, or being banned from entry into a country for an innocent tweet.”
It’s impossible to accurately predict what file-sharing will look like 5 years from now. But, a safe assumption is that anonymity will play a more central role than it ever has.
Recent crackdowns have made operators of central file-sharing sites and services more cautious of copyright infringement. Some even went as far as shutting down voluntarily, like BTjunkie.
In the long run this might drive more casual downloaders to legitimate alternatives, if these are available. Those who keep on sharing could move to smaller communities, darknets, and anonymous connections.
Source: Gizmodo
The Star Wars Last Supper
Avinash Arora just wrote to tell me that he has updated his amazing Star Wars’ Last Supper, with Luke Skywalker as Jesus. It’s much cleaner and crispier than the original one because it uses the Blu-ray movies.
Because of the new edition’s ratio adjustment, the new image is made with 70,448 frames instead of 69,550. He created two sizes for print: a big 200 dpi and an insanely huge 900 dpi version. If you have a plotter, you can basically print out a billboard out of this file.
You can download the files here.
Source: Gizmodo
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‘Horror frog’ breaks own bones to produce claws
“Amphibian horror” isn’t a movie genre, but on this evidence perhaps it should be. Harvard biologists have described a bizarre, hairy frog with cat-like extendable claws.
Trichobatrachus robustus actively breaks its own bones to produce claws that puncture their way out of the frog’s toe pads, probably when it is threatened.
David Blackburn and colleagues at Harvard University’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, think the gruesome behaviour is a defence mechanism.
The researchers say there are salamanders that force their ribs through their skin to produce protective barbs on demand, but nothing quite like this mechanism has been seen before.
The feature is also found in nine of the 11 frogs belonging to the Astylosternus genus, most of which live in Cameroon.
Instant weapon
“Some other frogs have bony spines that project from their wrist, but in those species it appears that the bones grow through the skin rather than pierce it when needed for defence,” says Blackburn.
At rest, the claws of T. robustus, found on the hind feet only, are nestled inside a mass of connective tissue. A chunk of collagen forms a bond between the claw’s sharp point and a small piece of bone at the tip of the frog’s toe.
The other end of the claw is connected to a muscle. Blackburn and his colleagues believe that when the animal is attacked, it contracts this muscle, which pulls the claw downwards. The sharp point then breaks away from the bony tip and cuts through the toe pad, emerging on the underside.
Hirsute horror
The end result may look like a cat’s claw, but the breaking and cutting mechanism is very different and unique among vertebrates. Also unique is the fact that the claw is just bone and does not have an outer coating of keratin like other claws do.
Because Blackburn has only studied dead specimens, he says he does not know what happens when the claw retracts - or even how it retracts. It does not appear to have a muscle to pull it back inside so the team think it may passively slide back into the toe pad when its muscle relaxes.
“Being amphibians, it would not be surprising if some parts of the wound heal and the tissue is regenerated,” says Blackburn.
Males of the species, which grows to about 11 centimetres, also produce long hair-like strands of skin and arteries when they breed (see image). It is thought that the “hairs” allow them to take in more oxygen through their skin while they take care of their brood.
Spiky snack
In Cameroon, they are roasted and eaten. Hunters use long spears and machetes to kill the frogs, apparently to avoid being hurt by their claws.
“This is an incredible story,” says Ian Stephen, curator of herpetology at the Zoological Society of London, UK. “Some frogs grow spines on their thumbs during breeding season, but this is entirely different.”
“For me, it highlights the need for a lot more research on amphibians especially in light of thethreat of mass extinctions,” he adds.
The existence of frogs with erectile claws like cats was first described by Belgian zoologist George Boulenger in 1900 in frogs found in the French Congo, now the Republic of Congo.
Journal reference: Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0219
Source: newscientist.com
These days, every single feature of smartphones are so important. That is why, Apple patented the“Slide To Unlock” feature of the iPhone. Google launched the Face Unlocking in the Android ICSand now when the Android 5.0 Jelly Bean is coming, we will have a new unlocking feature on the Android smartphone.
A recent Google patent reveals the upcoming screen unlocking features. This will bring new features to the unlocking screen on the Android phones like direct access to specific apps without unlocking the phone etc.
Photo reblogged from 8 Bit Future with 40 notes
Android 5.0 to beat Windows 8 to market?
A Digitimes report has indicated that Android 5.0 (Jelly Bean) will be released in the second quarter of 2012, ahead of an anticipated Windows 8 release in the third quarter.
According to supply chain sources, Google is hoping new tablets will be powerful enough to support dual operating systems, while planning to push Andriod onto notebooks and netbooks as well.
Android 5.0 will be further optimized for tablet PCs, while Google will also integrate its Chrome system functions to push dual-operating system designs. Brand vendors can either choose to adopt only Android 5.0 or add Android 5.0 to Windows 8 devices with the ability to switch between the two OSes without the need to shut down the computer.
Source: digitimes.com
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