If you are thinking of purchasing a Chromebook during the holiday season, then now is a good time to do so. Google has sweetened the pot by offering 1TB of free Google Drive cloud storage for two years with the purchase of a new Chromebook. “That’s enough space to keep more than 100,000 awkward holiday sweater pics safe and shareable in Source: http://hothardware.com/News/google-offers-1tb-of-drive-storage-for-free-with-chromebook-purchase/
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Intuit backtracked yesterday, not only again apologizing for stiffing TurboTax customers by not telling them of changes in its business model but saying that it would offer partial refunds and free upgrades to its more capable editions.
“These past couple of weeks have not been our finest hour,” admitted Intuit’s CEO Brad Smith in a video posted on his LinkedIn account Thursday. “We’re taking new steps to make things right.”
The fiasco over TurboTax—what tax forms it supported in its Q&A-like interview process—harked back to early January, when Consumerworld.org revealed that the desktop edition of TurboTax Deluxe omitted sections for forms required by the self-employed, investors and rental property owners. After buying Deluxe, as they had for years, users were told mid-way through the tax preparation process that they needed to pay more and do an in-place upgrade to deal with Schedules C, D and E.
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Yesterday at its Unpacked Event in New York City, Samsung announced a couple of new high-end smartphones and a companion virtual reality headset, namely the Galaxy Note 4, the Galaxy Note Edge, and the Galaxy Gear VR. Just in case you missed the initial announcement, the Galaxy Note 4 features a 5.7-inch Quad HD (2560x1440) Super AMOLED display,...
Seen here in its dock, the ElitePad 1000 G2 is fairly thin for a Windows 8.1 tablet.
Make it better and they will come. That’s a common vendor mantra, but rarely are the improvements as compelling as those on HP’s $800, 10.1-inch ElitePad 1000 business tablet. The successor to the ElitePad 900 replaces the single-core Intel Atom Z2760 with a significantly faster quad-core Intel Atom Z3795 CPU, features a higher-resolution display (1920x1200 versus 1280x800), and has twice the memory at 4GB. Those adds alleviate just about every complaint we had about the ElitePad 900—without killing what we liked about it. Even the battery life has improved.
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Facebook has made some changes in the background to its iPhone and iPad app that should allow users to load photos faster. The improvements are due to Facebook adopting the Progressive JPEG (PJPEG) image format.
The PJPEG format stores several scans of one photo, each with a different level of quality. This allows the image to be rendered with the first, low quality scan, and then be updated with the other scans that each have a higher level of quality. Facebook now users the PJPEG image format for several reasons:
- Data consumption: PJPEG allows us to skip downloading smaller versions of an image.
- Network connections: Since we don't download smaller versions of an image anymore, we now use only one connection per image instead of many.
- Disk storage: Storing fewer photos on disk decreases the amount of disk space used by the app.
- One URL: Since we no longer need to download multiple images at different sizes, we can simply use one URL.
The final result is that photos in the iOS Facebook app with the PJPEG format load 15% faster compared to its old method.
Source: Facebook
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/p7CxQWApcyw/story01.htm
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Source: http://tabletbuzzblog.com/how-effective-is-the-ipad-as-a-business-tool/
Are you ready to walk on the wild side? Windows 10 is on the horizon, and even though it’s still not going to be complete to sometime around fall 2015, Microsoft’s giving IT Pros and PC enthusiasts an early taste of what’s to come with the Windows 10 Preview.
After releasing initial Windows 10 Technical Preview on October 1, 2014, Microsoft released a steady flow of new builds and features. On January 23, 2015, the company pushed out build 9926, a feature-packed update with Cortana, the new Xbox app, and many of the other new goodies revealed at its January Windows 10 event.
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It's no secret that Microsoft is practically giving Windows 8.1 licenses away to tablet vendors in order to drive adoption, but now we know exactly how much the company makes.
According to a document on Microsoft's OEM Partner Center site, discovered by ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, the price of Windows 8.1 with Bing on 9-inch or smaller tablets is $0. (Microsoft avoids using the term “free,” and the site lists the actual price as $10, minus a $10 “configuration discount.”)
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Sony has requested approval to delay its third-quarter earnings report, citing damage to network systems in its Sony Pictures Entertainment division caused by the cyberattack it sustained late last year.
The November attack, which the FBI has http://www.techworld.com/news/security/fbi-blames-north-korea-for-sony-hack-citing-malware-evidence-3591744/”>concluded was conducted by North Korea in order to protest release of the comedy film “The Interview,” has resulted in new U.S. economic http://www.pcworld.com/article/2864292/white-house-approves-sanctions-against-north-korea-for-sony-hack.html”>sanctions against the communist nation. Though it was initially pulled from theatrical release, the movie—depicting a planned assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—was ultimately released in late December and earned more than $1 million on its opening day.
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Acer is targeting students and teachers two Chromebooks, one a 15.6-inch laptop, the other a 11.6-inch model, that are built to withstand repeated use in the school environment.
The Taiwanese PC maker has been offering an expanding line of notebooks loaded with Google’s Chrome OS, which have been gaining popularity as a lower-cost alternative to Windows devices.
Acer’s two new products, announced Wednesday, are built with “extra durability features” for the education market. They include strong outer coverings and hinges that can endure stress, such as drops to the floor, or being crammed in a backpack.
The larger, 15.6-inch model, the Acer C910, can come in two screen resolutions: 1920 by 1080 pixels, or a 1366 by 768 pixels. It weighs 2.2 kg (4.85 pounds), and comes just after Acer announced a 15-inch Chromebook model earlier this month, sporting similar specs.
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WhatsApp is now available for the Web, in a form that pairs the mobile version of the app to a user’s desktop computer.
People can go to https://web.whatsapp.com in the Google Chrome browser to go to the WhatsApp Web client. A QR code will appear, which the user will scan with the WhatsApp mobile app on their phone to get started. The user’s phone needs to stay connected to the Internet for the client to work.
At the moment, it works only on Chrome with the Android mobile app. For the iOS version of the app, the company can’t provide a Web client right now due to platform limitations, WhatsApp said.
WhatsApp remains focused on mobile, but the desktop pairing is designed to give people another option for checking their messages instead of just on their phones. Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, provides a similar service through its Messenger app and main website. The WhatsApp Web client is meant as an extension of the smartphone app, mirroring the messages.
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Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2873472/whatsapp-arrives-on-the-desktop.html#tk.rss_all
Designed to protect your HTC One M8 from serious damage, the CONVERT Combo from Seidio includes a dual-layer hybrid case with kickstand for every day use as well as a durable swivel clip holster to keep at your side. Get yours in black or blue today for only $29.95!
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/ij6vYHd8c38/story01.htm
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The find-things-nearby Field Trip app by Google's Niantic Labs has been updated with a new Material Design, uh, design. The last real redesign of the app came over a year ago, and today's update brings the app in line with the rest of Google's modern Android design language.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/vPoed20Q-xQ/story01.htm
