As long as you unlock the beast it does not matter

Unsleashed my glow will slay you,

Grey and dark,

My light reflects

Forever!

After the burn out epidemy there is another plague we humas indulge into: the chronical, multifactorial, incurable mobbing syndrome. The mobbed individuals see themselves as victims but they are only higher evolved humas. Innate superiormorality served by an overdose of emotional intelligence triggers feelings of danger in the mobber. Threat reactions allows mobbers to find the Achiles heel of the mobbed one: empathy. Can empathy be turned off? Can we train this on/off switch?

A lot has been written on negative effects of mobbing. Are there any positive ones? NO! Can we shift the negative into constructive? YES: through creation! By artistical expression and/or creativity we are offered not onlythe possibility to let it out but also we are empowered by the fulfillment of the result and so are offered theoption of letting go, neutralizing rage. Remember that negative feelings activate our creativepotential also and using this can be trained.

The lines aboveinspired by mobbing for all the beasts of creativity, all empathy addicts:a single ray of light slays an ocean of darkness. You are the light!

Supposing you are one of those who afford at least the following: a house, food, a computer and internet access Ive got a trick for you to get really rich.

Before describing my idea here as being crap just let me define one thing:

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Millennial Mind Upload | Online snapshot thoughts, ideas ...

As long as you unlock the beast it does not matter

Unsleashed my glow will slay you,

Grey and dark,

My light reflects

Forever!

After the burn out epidemy there is another plague we humas indulge into: the chronical, multifactorial, incurable mobbing syndrome. The mobbed individuals see themselves as victims but they are only higher evolved humas. Innate superiormorality served by an overdose of emotional intelligence triggers feelings of danger in the mobber. Threat reactions allows mobbers to find the Achiles heel of the mobbed one: empathy. Can empathy be turned off? Can we train this on/off switch?

A lot has been written on negative effects of mobbing. Are there any positive ones? NO! Can we shift the negative into constructive? YES: through creation! By artistical expression and/or creativity we are offered not onlythe possibility to let it out but also we are empowered by the fulfillment of the result and so are offered theoption of letting go, neutralizing rage. Remember that negative feelings activate our creativepotential also and using this can be trained.

The lines aboveinspired by mobbing for all the beasts of creativity, all empathy addicts:a single ray of light slays an ocean of darkness. You are the light!

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Rage | Millennial Mind Upload

It's a good idea to keep your cloud data securely encrypted to protect it from prying eyes, and Cloudfogger provides a free solution that does exactly that with minimal hassle.

2014 had its fair share of hacking scandals, and even everyday Joes couldn't feel completely confident that they wouldn't end up with their data scattered around the internet. Given how popular cloud storage has become and how ready we are to upload our documents to be stored on some remote server adding an extra layer of encryption can be a very good idea indeed.

That's why you should give Cloudfogger a try. Protects your files with a hefty chunk of 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption which complements your cloud host's own encryption making it even harder for hackers to get their grubby mitts on your precious data. It does it seamlessly, too, so there's no need to remember to protect your files before uploading them; Cloudfogger does it all for you.

You can store the encryption key locally, ensuring it's not stored online and therefore won't be handed over if anyone asks for it. In light of the NSA surveillance scandal, that's more peace of mind that your data is safely protected from prying eyes.

And to round it all off, Cloudfogger is completely free, so you don't even have to shell out to keep your files securely encrypted.

Read more:

Download of the day: Cloudfogger

The Hairdryer

Nutmeg: Or is that Fatso? The official mascot of the Asian Cup. Photo: AFP

Tim Cahill has done some amazing things in his career. Score at three different World Cups. Score at three different Asian Cups. Score goals in three different league competitions. But how about scoring his son an official Asian Cup 2015 ball before kick-off last Friday night?

The Hairdryer was standing just a few metres away at Melbourne's AAMI Park when Cahill produced an extraordinary piece of skill after hearing the cry of his son in the stand. The New York Red Bulls forward, having just completed his warm-up, looked up to the second tier and chipped a perfect pass to his progeny.

We were going to mention it before but thought nobody would believe us. However, Cahill himself found a video of the incident, which we understand he will upload to his Twitter account some time this week. It will be worth watching.

Saudi Arabian team refuses to get on bus driven by woman The Asian Cup is one of the most diverse tournaments staged anywhere in the world, meaning plenty of different sensitivities need to be catered for. However, it's not always possible to please everyone.

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The Saudi Arabian contingent have been doing a fair bit of travelling around recently doing their pre-camp on the Surf Coast, playing their first match in Brisbane and their next match in Melbourne so you might have thought the last thing on their mind was the gender of their bus driver.

However, when the team was due to board a bus with a female at the wheel, the team initially refused to get on. Women aren't allowed to drive their own cars in Saudi Arabia, let alone chaperone a delegation of testosterone-charged male athletes. Eventually, they agreed to board, but requested that only male drivers greet them thereafter.

Saudi Arabia is the only nation in the world which maintains this rule, with Muslim clerics claiming "licentiousness" will spread should the law be changed which, apparently, the government is considering.

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Tim Cahill kicks perfect goal into crowd at Asian Cup opener

Mobile apps can be great fun, but they can also cumulatively take up a lot of your time and distract you from work. Youll need more than just willpower to properly control your appetite for apps you need to understand how they work, and why theyre extremely addictive.

Photo by Mo Riza, Wonderlane, XKCD and m01229

Apps are awesome. Many apps entertain you while killing the idle five-minute segments in your day. Some apps actually help you stay in touch with friends and family that youd otherwise have lost contact with. Theres a reason so many great businesses and experiences have been built on mobile apps. But as a reader told author Nir Eyal, If it cant be used for evil, its not a super power.

There is a darker side to apps that a lot of us arent aware of. For example, we spend way more time on them that we think. As information research firm Nielsen reports, we now spend 65% more time each month using apps than we did just a couple of years ago. By the end of 2013, on average, we spent 30 hours and 15 minutes per month using apps. Thats almost two full days of being awake.

If you need further convincing were becoming addicted to our apps and phones, venture capitalist and mobile analyst Mary Meeker reports that on average we check our phones 150 times every day in her May 2013 Internet Trends Report.

Mobile analytics company Flurry defines a mobile addict as someone who launches apps more than 60 times per day. Based on their data from 500,000 apps across 1.3 billion devices, they saw the number of mobile addicts users grow 123% between 2013 and 2014. In March of 2014, there were 176 million mobile addicts, up from 79 million in March of 2013.

Where manufacturers of earlier technology also wanted to make their products more engaging, they didnt have the data or algorithms to the extent app makers do today. Developers can track every single interaction you have with the app, and use that data to make their products more addictive. And they will people who make apps literally use addiction as a success metric.

The solution isnt to throw apps out the window. Theyre extremely convenient and they bring great benefit and joy to our lives. Theyre also only going to more and more useful. Youd probably rather live in a world with apps than one without them. Much like how youd be cautious around substances like alcohol, which can be potentially addictive, you can enjoy it in healthy, controlled, amounts.

Apps arent passive (by default). They constantly reach out to you through your inboxes and push notifications. These notifications require a human element to overcome. Heres how apps are designed to be addictive, how you can take back control of your time and energy, and how you can live happily with apps:

You may have an almost Pavlov-like reaction to the sound of a text message, a push notification, or a phone vibration in your pocket. App developers and marketers specifically design these hooks to draw your attention back to your mobile device.

Continue reading here:

The Tricks Apps Play On Your Mind To Keep You Hooked

Oh, what a difference two years make. The Precision-Guided Firearm (aka the Linux Gun) from TrackingPoint that blew many a mind at 2013's CES is back and better than ever. And by "better" I mean able to hit a target traveling at 30 mph, 1,800 yards out.

The Linux Gun, as you may remember, utilizes a laser rangefinder and on-board computer to drastically increase its user's first shot accuracy by accounting for a number of environmental variables and showing where the round will land, not where the user is currently aiming. As such, it has no problem perforating smart phones from a kilometer away. "I would say we're at about 70 percent first-shot success probability at 1,000 yards with inexperienced shooters," Oren Schauble, a TrackingPoint marketing official told Military.com at the rifle's debut demonstration.

2013's model was rated out to 1,200 yards (about two-thirds of a mile). This year's Mile Maker model boosts that range out to 1800 yards (just over a mile) thanks to the integration of more advanced hardware and more robust trajectory calculation software. Plus, the 2015 models will also off the ability to export a live feed of what one sees in the scope to a tethered mobile device so people on Youtube and Facebook can watch riflemen snatch life in real time.

What's more, the price of these firearms has fallen precipitously. The company's introductory model cost $17,000 at launch but will set tech-obsessed hunters and wannabe clock tower snipers back $8,000. Eight grand is still quite expensive for a rifleeven one that does the aiming for youbut it's still effectively now half-off.

This is an interesting, and somewhat troubling, development in personal firearm technology. I mean, the record for longest successful sniper shot in military history is 1.54 miles (set in Afghanistan, 2009). This rifle lets any schmuck off the street hit a target three quarters of that distance without really tryingand more than likely, on the first try. And combined with the ability to upload video of your shot directly to the internet, this system could prove an extremely tempting new publishing platform for a new generation of thrill killers. [ExtremeTech - Defensetech]

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This Aim-Assisted Rifle Is Now Accurate Up to a Mile

Segun Akiode

To a social media rookie, Twitter is a hard nut to crack. They just dont get it. In simple terms, Twitter forces you to learn how to communicate and share insightful ideas in tweets, which are no more than 140 characters.

Actually, Twitter is the simplest of the social networks. The simplicity of Twitter makes it possible for real social communication/networking with exchange of or Direct Messages (DMs) just like exchange of SMS. Can you relate with that?

Twitter isnt the first social network someone typically thinks about when applying for a job. Platforms such as LinkedIn come first to mind; but it does have some unique advantages over other social platforms. Twitter is a great platform for sharing resources and information. Job- related information is not left out as well.

Jobvite, a social recruiting intelligence and technology firm, in 2014 conducted a study of how job seekers use social networking sites in their job search and they came up with a 2014 Jobvite Job Seeker Nation Study. The study showed that there is a growth in the use of Twitter by applicants in their job search. In 2013, 34 per cent of job seekers said they were using Twitter to find a job; and in 2014, the number jumped to 40 per cent. This indicated that job seekers are beginning to adopt the use of Twitter in their job search with a high tendency that the 2015 figures would be higher.

So, how useful can Twitter be to your job search? Explained below are some useful tips on how job seekers can use twitter as a job searching tool

Create a Twitter account with well-crafted bio

It is usually advisable, from recruiting stand point, that when a job seeker creates a Twitter account, it should be one that showcases professional outlook. Many social media addicts would disagree with me on this, as they believe social media is their fun-time or hang-out spot, so why be professional about it? Take your Twitter account/handle as an extension of your online personal brand, and be serious about it. Be professional in your choice of Twitter handle. A Twitter bio is the section provided on your account for you to write about yourself in 160 characters or less. Make your bio concise and meaningful.

Upload a professional profile photo

A Twitter avatar or profile photo is the photograph that represents your identity on Twitter and appears with your tweets. For the purpose of maintaining a professional outlook on the social network, upload a professional photo/avatar for this purpose. Remember, the essence is to make a good impression on a potential employer. So, upload your profile photo wisely.

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Using Twitter in your job search

By Lindsey Roberts January 8 at 2:01 PM

Jenna Walker, a professional photographer in Denver, shoots through the lens of her smartphone more than her DSLR these days. I find myself taking more and more images on my phone because its the camera I have with me, she says.

Her reality is now everyonesmoms and dads especially. I personally havent used my point and shoot in who knows how long because its too bulky to carry around in a purse already full of snacks, sippy cups and pacifiers. More notably, Smithsonian Magazine opened up its annual photo contest to smartphone photos just this year, acknowledging that the quality of iPhoneography is on the uptick.

To help us all take better photos and edit them right on our phone, we asked Walker and her pro photog crew of husband Matt Walker and sister Katie Thurmesall co-founders of photo-product business Artifact Uprisingto add to our list of the best apps for great smartphone photos.

1. Dont miss the shot: Fast Camera ($4.99) Toddlers moving too fast around the house? Kids flying around at a sporting event? Instead of waiting for a still-enough perfect photo (not going to happen), try taking up to 1,500 pictures a minute with this app and then review and select only the good images. I get great photos of my son at play this way.

2. Take easier selfies: CamMe (Free) Instead of holding a camera out only as far as your arm to take a selfie, hold it away as far as you like. Then, raise your other hand and close it into a fist. CamMe uses gesture control to help you take better cheesy photos of you and your childeven in photobooth form, with three successive pictures, if you like.

3. Prepare photos for Instagram: Squaready (Free) Walkers husband, Matt, uses his Instagram feed as a journal, and so he leans heavily on Squaready, which allows you to add white space on the top and bottom of a picture, giving you more control over how an image will appear in Instagram. A lot of people are using their Instagram feeds to tell the story of their life, Walker says.

4. Easy editing: Afterlight ($0.99) Afterlight features 59 fun photo filters, 66 natural textures, and 128 frames. But the best part is just how intuitive it is to edit the quality of a photo, making it ready to quickly upload and order prints or books from your phone. This app is a favorite of photographer Jen Altman, author of Photographing Your Children: A Handbook of Style and Instruction (2013).

5. Pro editing: VSCO (Free) Our entire team of photographers are huge fans of Visual Supply Co. [the makers of VSCO], Walker says. They dont overdo it. You have controls in the filters, but the filters are set out to mimic the intricacies of film. Advanced camera controls and sleek professional-grade tools and presets are the bread and butter here, though the ability to follow other photographers work is instructive and inspiring.

6. Automatically back up photos: Carousel (Free) Carousel is a godsend for parents who take hundreds of thousands of pictures of priceless moments because it backs up, dates, and organizes all of photos and videos to Dropbox. Automatically. Without taking up any room on your smartphone. Dropbox is sufficient in space for me, Walker says. Im no longer keeping multiple hard drives. Best of all, she adds, It [Carousel] gives me peace of mind when my kids steal my phone.

Go here to read the rest:

6 smartphone photo apps to try

Watching a progress bar fill up slowly while waiting for stuff to download or upload is the Internet equivalent of being put on hold. It's always tempting to hit "cancel" instead of "OK." What if a clever design could make this daily drag suck less?

To that end, Swedish graphic designer Viktor Hertz created "Works in Progress Bars." On his website, he calls it "A quick and silly little side-project," but if actually implemented, it could make digital drudgery slightly more fun. Hertz redesigned the progress bar in a series of imaginative graphics, with the OK/Cancel buttons rephrased as existential questions.

Inspiration struck during an idle moment staring at a screen: "I was waiting for Illustrator to save a document, and the idea just popped up. I try to look at things with an open mind and find ways to use shapes and objects in a completely new way," Hertz tells Co.Design.

One is a "Quick Personality Test," which asks whether the progress bar is half empty or half full. Another, called "Becoming a Jedi," resembles a Star Wars lightsaber slowly filling up with a green glow (trusting the force requires patience). Yet another references "Should I Stay or Should I Go," The Clash's 1982 hit, with "Stay" and "Go" replacing the boring "OK" and "Cancel" buttons.

Hertz printed his Works in Progress Bars on t-shirts, tote bags, and iPhone cases, which he sells on his website.

[via Studio360]

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Cleverly Redesigned Progress Bars Make Slow Downloads Suck Less

cradlea1 hour ago

I know its treading on holy ground at this point, especially on this site, when anyone addresses something about shared cinematic universes, but Ive got a bone to pick with them. Firstly, its been a great run for Marvel over the past few years, with only one film that most would call mediocre (Iron Man 2) and it looks like it will continue. To add to all of that, now were getting a DC and Universal Monsters shared universe, along with massive expansions of older franchises (Star Wars being the biggest draw). Its all incredibly exciting.

But, theres a point of contention here: while it may be many a fans dream to see so much content pouring out of their favorite franchises it must be the strangest thing as one of the bigger creative forces behind it. Think about it: if youre a director, unless youre the head of the centre-piece film (i.e. Avengers, Justice League, Star Wars: Episode xyz), youre not the shepherd anymore; youre just another dog. The real shepherds are the Feiges, Tsujiharas (kind of), and (unfortunately) Orcis of the industry. In a medium where directors usually reign weve gotten to a point where its the most TV-like studios (ones that have showrunners) that are making the biggest bucks. Marvel films, the Transformers franchise, you name it they all have the same heads of creativity behind them. Franchises are turning the film medium into extended TV. And now with the advent of streaming companies like Netflix, Amazon, etc. releasing full seasons of shows in one day, it seems like the roles have reversed. Fincher and Scorsese are making the jump to HBO with more intent than just being executive producers and True Detectives proven that a single directors vision (Cary Fukunaga in this case) for a show can work in tandem or even outweigh the whims of the producers/writers. Its a really strange time and I hope that its not an outright switch of practices between film and television.

Theres a reason why directors were the end all be all of creative decisions on films and the same goes for showrunners/writers for TV. Films arent really meant for long form storytelling that doesnt already have a beginning and end planned; I mean why do they keep on quasi-rebooting Bond all the time? Because they never have an end planned for him and because its so difficult to think of one that fits the messes theyve made (great as they are) from the films prior. Hence reboot after reboot. Why arent shows rebooted as often as films are? Because each thread of the particular franchise/universe has been so meticulously laid out for 5-10 seasons its impossible to try and revisit the stable of characters and environments that have already been introduced.

Maybe Im being too conservative about what films and TV should be fitting them into boxes, which, in and of itself, is contrary to the idea of creative media in the first place but Ive liked films being one-off tales and TV being the long adventures theyve been because it just works so well. I cant imagine Star Wars being able to pull off its charm on TV and weve seen what Star Trek is like on film (excluding the JJ Abrams pseudo-Star Wars/Trek films of the past few years) and the spark isnt there aside from (SPOILERS) Spocks death in Wrath of Khan. Its alright to have a few stragglers here and there between mediums, but Im hoping we never get to a point where films become dragged out two hour long episodes of a series and TV show episodes become short yet unsatisfying collections of films.

But hey, those are just my two cents.

Originally posted here:

Open Discussion January 7, 2015

The selfie stick: makes you look like a shallow, awful clown. Photograph: Alamy

This week its the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, an annual opportunity for tech companies to unveil their latest gizmos during Januarys traditional slow news week, thereby picking up precious coverage that might otherwise be spent detailing something anything more important than an egg whisk with a USB port in the side.

At the time of writing, the show is yet to kick off, although some of the offerings have already been unveiled such as Belty, the worlds first smart belt, which monitors your waistline and tells you when its time to lose weight, just like a mirror or a close friend might. More excitingly, it adjusts to your girth (again, like a close friend might), and will tighten or loosen itself according to your current level of blubber. No word yet on whether its possible to pop a Belty round your neck and order it to squeeze you into the afterlife, but theres no reason they cant incorporate that feature in Belty 2.0, except maybe on basic ethical, moral and humanitarian grounds.

According to Bertrand Duplat, whose company manufactures the Belty, the belt experience hasnt changed in centuries, which is a) true but b) wasnt formerly a problem worth solving, and also c) how does doing up a belt qualify as an experience anyway?

There will be more announcements over the next few days 5K televisions, a new Sony Walkman, sentient toothpicks that dream of a better life while they prise flecks of half-chewed poultry from your gums but none will beat the following far more exciting products Ive just made up for the sheer giddy thrill of it. Three, two, one. Commence:

Last year brought widespread acceptance of the selfie stick a stick you clamp your smartphone into so you can take a narcissistic self-portrait at a slightly greater distance than your feeble human arms will allow. Whats odd about the selfie stick is that while it might faintly improve the photo youll post on Facebook, it definitely makes you seem like a shallow, awful clown to any bystanders in the humdrum physical space youre posing in. And its unnecessary anyway, because if youre the sort of person who takes so many self-portraits youll consider spending money on a selfie stick, its a cast-iron certainty that absolutely no one needs or wants to see another photograph of you ever again. Until the invention of the Selfpreciator, that is. The Selfpreciator is a quasi-sentient head-shaped device with one giant eye and a fixed grin, programmed to gaze approvingly at every self-portrait you upload while issuing appreciative murmurs and tweeting encouraging emojis your way. Its even got its own selfie stick, so it can take photographs of itself admiring photographs of you, then email them to you, so you can ignore them while adjusting your selfie stick.

As 2015 dawns, Britain seems more divided than ever. But theres one thing we can all agree on: we just dont see enough of Nigel Farage. Sometimes you can eat an entire Twix without seeing a photograph of him raising a pint and guffawing or hearing his voice on the radio. Total Farage Plus is a tiny chip almost painlessly inserted into the back of your mind using a knitting needle and a croquet mallet. Once in place and booted-up, it hijacks the signal to your visual cortex, skilfully Photoshopping Farage into whatever youre looking at. Enjoying a glorious sunset? Itll be even better with Farages face peeping over the horizon. Bathing your kids? Nigels here too, with a cheeky blob of bath foam perched on his lovable nose! Staring into the eyes of the one you love? Thats not your own reflection gazing back at you its Farage. Kicking a foreigner to death? Whos that standing beside you, delivering the final blow with his steel-toe boots, real ale sloshing from the pint hes still holding in one hand, a lusty guffaw bursting from his wobbly amphibian throat? Its Farage again! What a card!

Our metropolises are blighted by two problems: a lack of public transport and a lack of public loos. This solves both issues in one fell swoop: a driverless biofuel vehicle and toilet cubicle in one. Step in, sit down, tap in the target postcode with your nose (more hygienic than fingers), then simply let go and defecate, secure in the knowledge that the supersmart vehicle is converting your excretions into fuel as it expertly navigates the city streets, allowing you to arrive at your destination as empty-bummed as you are relaxed. NB to prevent terrorism and/or mobile cottaging, the entire thing is made of completely transparent glass, and has a maximum speed of 1mph.

A small handheld device that enables you to leap forward in time without even realising youre doing it. Simply pull the small rectangular device out of your pocket midway through an episode of Call the Midwife or a dinner party or a wedding or something, intending to glance at it for mere seconds, then gasp in astonishment as you look up apparently moments later to discover an hours flown by and you havent heard or seen anything thats happened in your immediate vicinity in that time. Twist: youve already got one of these. DIDNT SEE THAT COMING, DID YOU? #christ #jesus #mindblown #wow

Continue reading here:

Never mind the 'selfie stick' or the 'smart belt' here are some REALLY useful inventions

Verizon Cloud will be down for maintenance for up to 48 hours next weekend and virtual machines hosted there will be inoperable, all to enable the introduction of unnamed improvements.

At the time of writing, Verizon's Cloud Client Care page does not mention the outage, but users have emitted Tweets (such as the one below) in which they express a little incredulity about the need for the temporary shutdown.

The Reg asked Verizon to confirm the outage and it responded by sending us following statement:

In a long and testy thread following the Tweet we've embedded above, a number of users and commentators wonder if it is acceptable to take a cloud down for even a few minutes, never mind at least 24 hours.

Verizon acquired its cloud from Terremark back in 2011 and has since outlined plans to build its own platform based on Xen and CloudStack.

That its rig requires 24 hours or more of maintenance is at odds with cloud vendors' usual approach of effortless upgrade, downtime in tiny doses and lots of snappy patter about agility and letting IT staff innovate instead of being stuck keeping the lights on.

Perhaps Verizon's new features will deliver that experience. For now, the company's delivering an oddity that's got chins wagging.

Sponsored: Todays most dangerous security threats

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Get off of my Cloud Verizon tells users ahead of 48-hour maintenance outage

Instagrams user base just surpassed 300 million, but its not surprising given that social networks are where most of us share our photos. With that in mind, Polaroid is jumping into game with the launch of Polaroid Blipfoto. But unlike Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, etc., Blipfotos online journal lets you upload only one photo a day. The idea isnt about sharing ridiculous amounts of selfies and food porn, but to document the one memorable event from your day.

A study found that we are posting about 1.8 billion new images each day, thanks to the proliferation of smartphone cameras, and that number is only going to get higher. Unfortunately, most of those photos are noise, since were just snapping at anything we see. Blipfoto is about editing; it brings us back to film photography or early days of digital, when we had limited storage capacity. Its telling you to stop for a moment, go through your days photos, and pick out the one that youll want to remember in the future.

Blipfoto itself isnt new, and its already being used around the world. Founder Joe Tree started the idea as a personal journal where he would upload one photo a day and write a small caption. That spawned into a service that has seen 5 million images uploaded from170-plus countries a small fraction compared to Instagram, but its popular particularly in Europe. Tree met Polaroid CEO Scott Hardy at a conference in 2013, and started the conversation for apartnership that would help bringBlipfoto intoits next phase.

[Polaroid and Blipfoto]were both trying to achieve quite similar things and there was a lot of parallels in what we both stood for, Tree says in a video to Blipfoto users. We can achieve so many more of our future by working together thanindividually. It takes us a huge step closer to our mission of trying to be a place where the world tells its stories.

Related:Instagram user base breezes past 300m mark, overtakes Twitter

Polaroid is rebranding the service as well as re-launching it in the U.S. to expand Blipfotos footprint, possibly increasing the user base by leveraging the Polaroid brand. (As you may know. Polaroid no longer makes things, but licenses its brand; the rebranding of Blipfoto is just part of Polaroids strategy for its namesake, which has become more valuable than the old products it was known for.) Part of the new service is a redesign and free apps for iOS and Android, but users (called Blippers) can continue to use the Web portal. The service is free and ad-free, and the site will also host photo competitions and community discussions. The service also encourages users to support one another, whether its photography tips or weeding out trolls. In someways, the service recalls how Polaroid instant cameras were used in the past.

Of course, asking people to share only one photo is easier said than done, but Blipfoto isnt meant to replace the more popular services; its designed to complement them. You can continue to use the other sites as a dumping ground of sorts, but the idea with Blipfoto is that in the future, you can look back to your photos and spark the memories that made a particular day special, which is the idea of photography to begin with.

More here:

Polaroid rebrands, re-launches Blipfoto one-photo-a-day social network

Provided by TechCrunch

Back in November 2014, Twitter announcedthat it would belaunching a native video servicein the first half of 2015 as part of its bigger strategy to position itself as a media platform. Now some more details have been uncovered about how this will work.

The TwitterVideo Player will host videos of up to 10 minutes with no limit on file size, initially supporting mp4 and mov files.There will be no ability to edit videos or schedule them within the player at least in its first iteration. And, pointedly, the Twitter Video Player will not support videos hosted on YouTube or anywhere else, just those on its own service.

The details of Twitters native video service were stumbled on by a Twitter usernoodling around, curious about what might live at the http://video.twitter.com?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000618 URL. (Its a restricted access page for now whereyou can request access to publish video content.) An angular JS file provides details about boththeterms of service as well as a FAQ about Twitter Video.

Back in November, Twitter set out its ambitions for what it wanted out of a new video service beyond that of what users can already do with Twitters Vine app, or by watching videos embedded by way of Twitters card feature.

Aside from just watching video more easily on Twitter, you should be able to record, edit and share your own videos natively on Twitter too, wrote Kevin Weil, VP of product. Alongside short looping Vinevideos, we think youll have fun sharing whats happening in your world through native video.

While the Twitter Video Player may be used by advertisers or other commercial partners, for example, Twitter will not allow third parties to sell access to the Video Player, or to embed otheradvertisements, sponsorships, or promotions on it.

Users will have some control over how the video is presented to users in timelines by way of a customised thumbnail. And it looks like while the time limit is 10 minutes, Twitter is hoping for those to be a quality 10 minutes.

In answer to whether there is a video size limit, Twitter writes, At this time we do not have a file size limit when uploading. As such, we are encouraging partners to use the highest resolution source video, to create the most optimal user experience. However, keep in mind that the larger the source file, the longer it will take to upload and process. It encourages users to make the source video bitrate as high as possible, at least 5000k bits, and the audio bitrate should be 128k.Frames per second should be preserved as per the original source material.

The move to expand Twitters video offerings comes at an interesting time for the company, and for the wider market for streamed video. For Twitter, the company has been pushing hard to find formats that bring both more viewers, and more premium advertisers, to its platform. Video has proven to be one of the more attractive formats for keeping users engaged on sites for longer, and its also an advertising format thats far closer to TV than regular internet content thereby appearing more attractive to premium brand advertisers that have traditionally favored TV for the majority of their ad spend.

Read the original:

Details Unveiled For Twitters Native Video Player To Rival YouTube

Get some peace of mind by breaking some bad habits and developing some good ones along the way.

It's a brand new year, so why not start it off right by ditching the shackles of old habits and trying some new things to make your tech life easier? We know that old habits die hard and that's why we've also included links to show you how to handle these common practices

Using the same password on multiple sites is trouble because if any one of those sites is hacked, that information could be used against you in many different places. Yes, it's inconvenient to have multiple passwords if you are relying only on your memory. That's why it's a good idea to give a password manager like LastPass a chance. If you've never tried a password manager, it can store your usernames and passwords for you, it can generate new passwords for you, and is accessible online. Here's our tutorial on how to use LastPass if you're up for a change.

I'll never forget the panic of almost losing hundreds of photos of my newborn because I didn't regularly sync my phone to my PC. Nowadays, that is a simple problem to overcome. If your phone is your primary camera (like it is for many), do yourself a favor and download an app that will automatically backup your photos and videos to the cloud.

There are plenty of options out there. If you like Google, you can use either Google+ on iOS or the Photos app on Android to set up auto backup. Dropbox also offers the same functionality if you turn on the camera upload option. If you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, you get unlimited storage of your photos as well with the Amazon Cloud Drive app.

It's easy to visit Facebook, see what your friends are up to, and post your own status updates. However, when was the last time you took a look to see what content you were posting and who could see it? Diving into those Facebook settings can seem like a nightmare, but we've got a great article on how to secure your Facebook account that you should take a look at.

We are all fans of running online video on our computers, but sometimes Flash can cause your computers fans to spin up to try to cool down your PC. You should give up having Flash running all the time. If you're on Google Chrome, try out FlashControl. If you're on Firefox, try out FlashBlock. By default, these plugins will not load Flash content on a page unless you put a site on a whitelist or if you click the Flash item to load it. You'd be surprised how much battery life you can save if you turn off Flash on a number of sites. Be warned that the web might look very different to you at first, but it's definitely worth it. If you want to squeeze more battery life out of your laptop or phones, check out our guide on battery life and how to preserve it.

If you're like the majority of people who use Android smartphones, you may just enjoy all the great apps on your phone. But, did you know that you can change the entire way your phone presents your apps and widgets? Manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and LG all put their spin on Android with their own customizations. However, you can modify your phone by trying any number of launchers. If you've never heard of a launcher, here's everything you need to know about Android launchers. Installing one is as easy as installing any other app and you can always go back to your phone's default if you so choose.

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Top 4 tech habits you need to break right now

Welcome to 2015: A brand new year and a great time for a fresh start. Instead of shooting for nebulous, unrealistic goals in the New Year, start off 2015 with vows to improve your digital life. (You werent really going to go to the gym every day or be nicer to your siblings anyway.)

Most of the suggestions below arent hard to achieve and some are even the set-it-and-forget-it kinds of resolutions. But you, your PC, and your data will be much better off once youve hit these technological high points.

Conventional wisdom says you should have three copies of your data: the "original" on your PC, a backup at home, and a backup off-site.

You should already be backing up your PCs at home with an external hard drive, but what about the third backup? Its better to be safe than sorry if the worst befalls your home, like a robbery or fire.

The easiest way to get an off-site backup is to useonline backup services likeBackblaze, Carbonite, or CrashPlan. Were not talking about syncing-focused cloud storage solutions like Dropbox or OneDrive here. Pure online backup services generally dont offer sync (SpiderOak excluded) and are usually much cheaper than their cloud storage counterparts. Backblaze, the service I currently use, charges you $50 a year to back up one PC plus any connected drives.

Thats small price to pay for peace of mind about your family photos, music, videos, and documents. Consider choosing a service that gives you the option to encrypt your data without providing the service itself a copy of the key (your encryption password). It does take a little more responsibility, because if you forget your password youll need to upload your data to the cloud all over againthe backup service wont be able to descramble everything for you. But in this age of governmental snooping, it's better to keep your personal data as protected as possible.

This is obviously NOT one of the leaked Jennifer Lawrence pictures, because she's wearing clothes.

In late August, highly personal photos of celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence and Kirsten Dunst surfaced online after falling into the hands of hackers who'd pilfered them from services such as iCloud. The hack was yet another reminder that you need to be careful about what you put online.

No, it's not fair to blame the victim in cases like these, but devastating hacks of personal data aren't going away anytime soon. So the best way to avoid any serious damage is to avoid putting anything online that you might regret being seen by others.

Dont forget that any photos you take with your phone may automatically be backed up to a cloud storage service depending on how youve configured your settingsthat how the actresses compromising pictures wound up on the Internet in the first place. The epic Sony Pictures hack can teach us a lot about protecting our email, including what not to say in digital messages. Finally, be sure to perform these five privacy fixes on Facebook pronto.

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8 easy digital resolutions for a happy, high-tech 2015

myKPAonline 3.0 helps dealerships manage comprehensive safety programs through expert loss control and risk management services.

LAFAYETTE, Colo. (PRWEB) - KPA, a business services provider, has released myKPAonline 3.0, an upgrade of its Environmental Health and Safety online offering. The new platform includes enhanced training and user management features, OSHA 300 log reporting, and is optimized for mobile devices. The companys enhancements to the platform will help dealers prevent workplace accidents, comply with OSHA regulations, lower workers compensation claims, and reduce insurance premiums.

myKPAonline 3.0 is a Web-based application that provides real-time access to EHS operations, including incident/accident management, documentation and tracking; compliance management; on-demand training; regulatory updates; and Safety Data Sheets (SDS) specific to a facilitys chemical inventory.

Debuting with myKPAonline 3.0 are additional training, reporting, and user management features. These components of the platform allow dealers to upload and manage employee lists that accurately track both onsite and online training that have or have not been completed by staff members. Training requirements are automatically customized based on job descriptions to save managers time and ensure employees are properly trained to maintain a safe and compliant work environment.

Additionally, myKPAonline 3.0 can now be accessed on tablets and mobile devices in addition to desktop computers. This optimization allows employees to easily identify and correct EHS issues while walking through their facilities and provides access to SDSs on the go. Users can also quickly access location-specific emergency contacts to call if help is needed. With OSHA 300 log recordkeeping and recording requirements going into effect on January 1st 2015, KPA has refined our accident reporting system and included an OSHA 300 log report generator.

Establishing a strong safety culture requires management support and tools to keep these issues top of mind every day our newest software release makes this easy. said Eric Schmitz, VP of EHS Products for KPA. In addition, our onsite expertise and product offerings help our clients reduce workplace risks and accidents as well as stay up to date on national and regional regulations. This in turn saves dealers money through lower insurance premiums.

To learn more about KPA and its complete portfolio of service offerings, or to request a demo of myKPAonline 3.0, visit http://www.kpaonline.com or call 866.365.1735.

About KPA KPA is a business services provider for more than 5,100 automotive, truck and equipment dealerships, and service companies. KPA provides Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) and Human Resources (HR) Management software and consulting services. KPAs solutions have been embraced by leading auto dealers, including eight of the 10 largest dealer groups in the United States, and endorsed by 26 dealer associations from around the country. KPA joined the Inc. 500/5000 list of fastest growing companies in 2012. To learn more, visit http://www.kpaonline.com or call 866.356.1735.

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Dealerships Ensure Workplace Safety With New Features Of KPA's Environmental Health And Safety Online Platform

By Fahmida Y. Rashid

If businesses want to grow, they cannot ignore marketing. Thankfully, there are plenty ofemail marketingtools available to help even the smallest of smallbusinessesget started. AWeber (starting at $19 per month) is just such a choice, offering aneasy-to-use platform with no hidden surprises. AWeber's templates simplify the process for creating visually attractive email marketing campaigns and the reporting dashboard tracks the most important basic statistics. It can'timport contacts Gmail or other third-party address books, nor does it offer Google Analytics integration. For better third-party contacts integration and tracking, you should consider MailChimp and Campaigner, our two Editors' Choices for email marketingtools. For this review, I signed up for AWeber's basic plan.

How does AWeber compare against the competition? It would cost a small business with 2,500 contacts in its marketing database $29 per month to get started with AWeber, which is equivalent to what it would cost to use iContactandCampaign Monitor. Unlike Campaign Monitor, AWeber doesn't have any caps on how many messages can be sent in a month.

Pricingand Features AWeber offers month-to-month, quarterly, and annual plans for each of its tiers. The least-expensiveplan, for up to 500 contacts, is $19 per month, $49 per quarter, or $149 per year. AWeber adds $10 to the normal rate to expand the service to 2,500 users and adds $30 to increase the capacity to 5,000 users. AWeber also automatically sets you up for automatic billing. If you change your mind, the company offers a 30-day full refund.

Watch out for the $29 report on how to develop an email marketing strategy. It's really easy to click on the wrong thing when checking out and winding up with the report in your shopping cart.If do you wind up buying it by mistake or don't find it useful, AWeber promises to refund your money. There is no free trial or free version to test out the servicebut AWeber does let you try out the software for just $1 during the first month. That's agooddeal.

Creating aSubscriber List AWeber lets you manually add up to 10 contactssubscribersvia a form. Each record collects the name of the person, email address, ad-tracking value, and the name of the initial email message the person will receive. This can turn into a long and tedious exercise for a long list of names.The import tool is a better choice, as it has a textbox to cut and paste an entire comma-delimited list of email addresses. You can also upload a spreadsheet (.XLS and .XLSX), text file (.CSV, .TSV, and .TXT). Unlike Campaigner, MailChimp, and GetResponse, AWeber doesn't have Gmail or third-partyintegration forpulling contacts, which is disappointing.

You have to let AWeber know where your subscribers came fromwhether they signed up on a form, bought a product and opted to receive mail, or gave verbal agreement. AWeber also wants to know whether the list is being moved from another mail marketing provider. The goal is to verify you aren't spamming or buying lists. AWeber auto-creates a confirmation message, which is sent to contacts to verify their subscription. Unlike GetResponse, AWeber allowed all of my disposable Mailinator addresses. I wish more services filtered out those domains especially, you have a limiton the number of subscribers you can contact, and disposable email addresses will seldom lead to a response. I found the process for importing the contactsslowa text file of less than a dozen names took a full 24 hours to beverified by AWeber and displayed in my account. The names I added manually took about 15 to 20 minutes toshow up in my account.

When creating a list, you have the choice of using a pre-generated subject line, such as "Please confirm your request to subscribe" or creating yourown. However, creating yourown meansyouhave to wait one day for AWeber's team to verify it asa valid subject line. AWeber also has a wizard to walk you through creating signup forms. I was happy to see I could segment users based on custom fields or profile information.

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AWeber Email Marketing

embrace peace

In 72 hours, the New Year will be ushered in. There is the need to dump some habits, embrace new ones and remain happy

Letting go of any hurt, anger and guilt that you might have piled up during the course of the year, is one of the ways to be happy. Forgive all who might have erred you in one way or the other including yourself.

Strive to live a peaceful life irrespective of the trials and challenges you might have faced. Stand out as a peacemaker and never compromise on that.

Drop bad habits

Yes, they say old habits die hard, but truth is, yours can be an exception. Quit bad habits. Eat healthy, go easy on junk food and take a lot of fruits, which will do your body a lot of good.

Discover potential

Everyone, including you, is blessed with one talent or the other. Discover and hone yours. If you are keen on cooking, enroll in a culinary class.

Try a new look

Break the monotony and try a new hairstyle. Adopt a new signature style if you so wish and do not be afraid to try out stylish new looks. Junk that outworn outfit; get a wardrobe overhaul if you can afford it.

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Bye to bad habits

(http://sharemynextmeal.com/)

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) Theres finally good reason to upload photos of your food on social media, thats because students from the University of The Fraser Valley have found a way to use the obsession to help food banks in our province.

Share My Next Meal (#sharemynextmeal) is a campaign started by Global Development students Kara Hanson, Carolina Silva and Cydney Myers.

Together the three wanted to bring awareness to local poverty in a creative way.

There are issues of poverty right here in our back yard, says Cydney Myers co-founder of the campaign. When people first think about poverty, the thought of their neighbour around the corner not having dinner that night is not what first comes to mind, says Myers.

Inspired in part by the global awareness that was brought to ALS from the popular Ice Bucket Challenge, the group launched a similar campaign hoping to boost donations to local food banks.

What you are asked to do is take a picture of your next meal and with the hashtag sharemynextmeal and take a portion of the proceeds of that meal and donate it to your local food bank, says Myers.

You then nominate three friends to do the very same.

Myers adds that the hashtag has been used all over the world as people from across Canada, the United States, Mexico, Portugal, UK, and even in Thailand have accepted the challenge.

You can find more information on how to get involved here.

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Students hope to use social media to help food banks