Halloween Easter Eggs in Google Knowledge Graph

Google's Knowledge Graph cards for searches like [zombie], [skeleton], [witch] or [ghost] include some Easter Eggs. For ghosts, Google informs users that the food source is "air, your fear, being remembered", you can avoid them by "burning sage; not building a pool on burial grounds; staying away from haunted places" and you can defeat them by "calling Peter Venkman and Ray Stantz" from Ghostbusters.

You can avoid skeletons by "staying away from catacombs and science classrooms" and skeletons have the following subgrouping "dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones".

To avoid zombies, "don't join a dance troupe led by a man in a red leather suit; stay out of graveyards".

{ via Search Engine Land }

Android KitKat

Android KitKat is the first new major Android release since Jelly Bean 4.1. There are so many changes and new features that it's hard to list all of them. It's a release focused on optimizations, immersive interfaces and support for new hardware. There's also a new device that showcases the new features: Nexus 5.

RAM is always an important issue when it comes to mobile devices, especially if they run Android. High-end phones and tablets now have 2GB or 3GB of RAM, but many low-end devices only have 512MB of RAM and they still need to provide a decent experience. One of the main KitKat goals is to run well on devices with 512 MB of RAM. "Changes across the system improve memory management and reduce memory footprint. Core system processes are trimmed to use less heap, and they now more aggressively protect system memory from apps consuming large amounts of RAM."



Most US carriers block Google Wallet and Google wanted to address this. "Android 4.4 introduces new platform support for secure NFC-based transactions through Host Card Emulation (HCE), for payments, loyalty programs, card access, transit passes, and other custom services. With HCE, any app on an Android device can emulate an NFC smart card, letting users tap to initiate transactions with an app of their choice - no provisioned secure element (SE) in the device is needed." If this works properly, Google Wallet's adoption problems could be solved.



Android 4.4 introduces native support for printing. "Android apps can now print any type of content over Wi-Fi or cloud-hosted services such as Google Cloud Print. In print-enabled apps, users can discover available printers, change paper sizes, choose specific pages to print, and print almost any kind of document, image, or file."



There's also an API that does for file pickers what the sharing buttons do for sending data. When you want to select a file to open it in your favorite app, Android 4.4 can show an interface that lets you pick a file from both local sources and cloud storage services. "A new storage access framework makes it simple for users to browse and open documents, images, and other files across all of their their preferred document storage providers. A standard, easy-to-use UI lets users browse files and access recents in a consistent way across apps and providers."

Android KitKat focuses a lot on improving battery life. "With sensor batching, Android works with the device hardware to collect and deliver sensor events efficiently in batches, rather than individually as they are detected. This lets the device's application processor remain in a low-power idle state until batches are delivered." You can also listen to more music. "Audio tunneling can dramatically improve battery life for use-cases such as listening to music over a headset with the screen off. For example, with audio tunneling, Nexus 5 offers a total off-network audio playback time of up to 60 hours, an increase of over 50% over non-tunneled audio."



There's a completely new phone app that shows the people you call often. "You can also search for nearby places and businesses, your contacts, or people in your Google Apps domain. Whenever you get a call from a phone number not in your contacts, your phone will look for matches from businesses with a local listing on Google Maps."

The features of the Messages app have been added to the Hangouts app, which now allows you to send SMS and MMS, while also displaying the messages you receive. The main goal of Hangouts was to provide a unified communication service and it's almost there. Google Voice integration will probably have to wait until next year.

Immersive mode, fullscreen apps. You can call them however you like. For those who found Chrome's fullscreen mode useful, they're in for a treat: there's an upgraded version in Android KitKat. "The book you're reading, the game you're playing, or the movie you're watching — now all of these take center stage with the new immersive mode, which automatically hides everything except what you really want to see. Just swipe the edge of the screen to bring back your status bar and navigation buttons."

Android has a new animation framework for transitions, which was inspired by Apple's Keynote app. For an almost-immersive experience, apps can use new window styles to request translucent system bars. Android's icons from the system bars are white, they're no longer blue.

When you're playing music, Android shows full-screen album art on the lockscreen. You can also say "ok Google" to use Google Voice Search directly from the lockscreen. Google Now cards are one swipe away from the homescreen: just swipe to the right.



The Chrome engine powers the embedded WebViews used by apps, there's a screen recording utility and there's native support for DASH (adaptive streaming).



Android 4.4 brings support for IR blasters and two new Bluetooth profiles. "Bluetooth HID over GATT (HOGP) gives apps a low-latency link with low-power peripheral devices such as mice, joysticks, and keyboards. Bluetooth MAP lets your apps exchange messages with a nearby device, for example an automotive terminal for handsfree use or another mobile device." There's also support for composite sensors: step detector and step counter.



The first Android device that runs KitKat is Nexus 5, a 5-inch phone manufactured by LG. It's lighter and thinner than Nexus 4, even though it has a bigger Full HD display. With a powerful SoC (Snapdragon 800), an improved 8MP camera with optical image stabilization, dual-band WiFI a/b/g/n/ac, LTE and a new look and feel inspired by the new Nexus 7, Google's new phone is one of the best devices you can buy. "Nexus 5 is available today, unlocked and without a contract, on Google Play in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan and Korea (and coming soon to India), starting at $349," informs Google. You can choose between 4 versions: 16GB/32GB, white/black. The 32GB versions cost $399.

Here's a hands-on video:

Android 4.4 updates for Nexus 4, 7, 10 will be available in the coming weeks. Galaxy Nexus won't get the update because it "falls outside of the 18-month update window when Google and others traditionally update devices."

6 Fantastic 3DS Games From 2013 That You Need To Play

When it comes to handheld video gaming, Nintendo has the market on lock down. The 3DS, and the newly released 2DS (which we just recently reviewed), are one of the most robust handhelds ever made. While it might lack the pure power of the PlayStation Vita, it more than makes up for it with the quality and quantity of games available. Over the course of 2013, some fantastic games have hit the market, and if you fancy yourself a gamer, you really should give each one of them a play, because they are downright fantastic. Pokemon X & Y For...

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A Complete Guide on How to Extend Your Laptop's Battery Life

For many of us our laptop is an indispensable part of our lives and is carried to work and back every day. However, nearly everyone knows the frustration of needing to do three or four hours' worth of work and only having an hour's worth of battery life left without a charger in sight! There are some ways to prolong the life of a laptop's battery, especially if your laptop is one of the new sleek and simple design, yet exceptionally powerful modern laptops, such as the new range of Samsung laptops.

Reduce Screen Brightness:

From a purely physical point of view the biggest power draw on a laptop is the screen display. Reduce the brightness of the screen to the lowest level that you can comfortably work at. Do not sacrifice your eyes for the sake of an extra half-an-hour of battery life, but do reduce the screen brightness as much as you feel able to.

Reduce Sound and use Headphones:

When watching videos or listening to music on your laptop reduce the sound as much as possible, even if you are using headphones. Not only does this conserve your battery, it can protect your hearing too!

Turn Off Wifi and Bluetooth:

Software can play a part in draining battery levels, and the worst offender is Wi-Fi. Modern laptops are designed to hunt around for Wi-Fi signals and can use an inordinate amount of battery power to do so. If you are travelling from home to work or vice versa and do not need to be connected to the Internet, then disable the Wi-Fi acquisition feature for the journey. This will prevent your laptop from hunting for access points that you have no intention of using anyway!

Remove USB and CD's when not in use:

If you are working during your commute to and from the office, try not to keep USB devices connected for long. Flash drives, optical CD drives and even USB mice can all drain power from a laptop, so plug them in, transfer information or do the tasks you need to, and then remove them as soon as you are finished. (It is not advised to try and use optical disc drives while travelling anyway, a sudden bump or jolt can damage the mechanism.)

Replace your Old Battery with a new one:

Finally, if your battery is over two years old, it may simply be getting old. Speak to the manufacturer about purchasing replacement batteries and ask if they offer long-lasting replacement batteries that hold a longer, stronger charge than the original one. Laptops are there for our convenience and to be used, but with a little care and attention your battery can last much longer, giving you a great user experience!

3 Great Facebook Games for Halloween

Watch any horror film, and you’ll learn one absolute truth. Things tend to go horribly awry whenever someone suggests that the protagonists split up. In the world of Eli Roth and M. Night Shyamalan, flying solo is perhaps the quickest way one can end up with an axe in the back. With that in mind, why don’t you spend this Halloween playing games with a slightly social twist? Facebook is a great platform for gaming with friends, and there are some incredible games to play this Halloween. Here are some that you will really dig. Ghost Tales – Ghost Saga...

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An Easy Way to Download APK Files from Google Play

Android apps and games are packed as APK files. Learn how to easily download any APK file from the Google Play Store.

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This story, An Easy Way to Download APK Files from Google Play, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 30/10/2013 under Android, Internet

New Features in Google+ for Android

Mobile apps for social services are strange. Until now, the Google+ mobile app didn't allow you to copy the text of a post. You had to get the URL of the post, open the browser and copy the text there. I thought this must be a bug until I checked the Facebook app and noticed that you can't copy text.



The latest version of the Google+ app for Android lets you copy the text of a post, copy comments, quickly reply to comments, translate posts and comments.

While the new features are useful, I don't see why you can't select some of the text and copy it. The Google+ app still doesn't support sharing intents. I assume that apps like Google+ and Facebook want to force users to stick to their own sharing features.



The Google+ app actually supports sharing intents, but only for your photos. The sharing interface looks different and it includes Google+ options. Google+ Photos has a new icon, it's now called "Photos", it includes photos and videos stored on your device, an Auto-Awesome section and is poised to replace the standard Android Gallery.

There's also an updated notification sidebar that shows the notifications you've read in a new section: "previously read". The interface is cleaner, but it's more difficult to hide the sidebar.



If you can't update to the new Google+ version, blame staged rollouts and download the APK file from here.

11 Hideously Scary Halloween Makeup Ideas You Can Borrow From The Web

Halloween is time for fun. It’s time for spooky music, it’s time for yummy creepy food, it’s time for good horror movies, and most of all, it’s time to unleash your creativity and dress up any way you want. While some may go for cute or funny, it’s hard to ignore the horror factor of Halloween. Anyone can color their face black or orange, but can you make your eyes bleed out? Can you zip open your face? Can you look like a zombie? With some inspiration to follow, you can. And we’ve found this inspiration for you, along with...

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Technophilia 87 Live From MakeUseOf

This week: a new virus encrypts your files and takes them hostage until you pay. I’ll ask James – who definitely didn’t make this, why are you even asking – what could possibly be worse than this. Blackberry’s BBM service is out now for Android and iOS users, and we couldn’t possibly be less excited. Rating bots disagree, find out why (hint: it’s because they’re bots). And we tell you about the greatest anti-piracy tactic of all time. This week’s episode is brought to you by Bitdefender QuickScan. Whenever you need a quick check or a second opinion, such as...

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7 Tech Savvy And Fiendish Tips To Get Ready For Halloween

With Halloween hot on our heels, procrastinators may have slipped behind on getting ready. Fortunately, thanks to the magic of the Internet, even the lazy can catch up quickly with a few simple apps and sites. From playing the latest spooky games to dressing up your home, the Halloween experience can be yours in a snap! Get Candy or Costumes Quick Need a costume or candy immediately? A few websites ship a wide selection of Halloween costumes quickly and cheaply. In my experience, the best is Amazon, particularly if you have its Prime service. Amazon even has its own Halloween...

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The 15 Most Useful Email Addresses That You Should Save in your Address Book

Most popular websites offer an email interface allowing you to post content on to that site from basic mobile phones that don't have apps or even a web browser.

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This story, The 15 Most Useful Email Addresses That You Should Save in your Address Book, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 30/10/2013 under Email, Internet

Invest A Minute A Day Into Making The World A Better Place

Economic crises, social inequality, unemployment, species extinction, scarcity of resources, climate change, and overpopulation, to just name a few. The challenges humans are facing are nothing short of overwhelming. You as an individual must feel powerless. And you’re not alone! The truth is, everyone is busy and struggles with the daily grind. Only few people have the mental or financial freedom to commit their lives to creating a brighter future. If you would like to contribute to a better world, you can do your part by supporting these people. The Internet is our ally in stopping big corporations from exploiting...

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Create Your Own Meme Online With These Free Tools

A meme is an idea, style, or action that spread person to person through Internet. A meme might be considered as a mimicked theme. The Internet meme can be a video, an image, website or any other theme. It will spread person to person through social media, websites, blogs, email, and news sources. They might relate different Internet cultures and sub cultures. The Internet memes are far much better than general memes as they can easily mark their footprints to social media that makes it analysable and traceable.

History of Meme

Richard Dawkins introduced the word meme in 1976 in his popular book- The Selfish Gene. He attempted to explain the cultural info spread by the means of word meme. Meme originally had come from a Greek world Mimema, which means something, imitated. The internet meme are the sub streams of general meme and is totally based on concept of specific culture and environment. In the year 2013, Dawkins characterized the internet meme as a meme that is consciously altered by humans and their creativity. He also added that the internet memes are just hijacking of the true ideas that had made the memes mutated and given a new direction to them.

Most of the memes are humor-centered these days because humor reaches to most of the people and appears very attractive. Some internet memes are about drams, shock-value, social commentary, deep content,super heros and intellectual absurdity. These memes are spreading among people in virus like fashion. Internet memes were first born on Reddit and 4chan. This made the developers to think about creating the meme tools for designing the memes to increase the graphics and make them more innovative. If you are eager to design the internet memes then here are meme makers for you. Let us have a look over the popular meme makers.

Best Tools to Create Meme's for Free Online:

Imgur

Probably one of the best tool I found to create memes online.It has an inbuilt tool called 'memegen'.This tool has great features using which you can select multiple text layers.Once you created a meme ,the image will be automatically uploaded to the imgur gallary .You can share the link on social networking sites or you can also embed the image.Even you can download the same on to your pc.

Rage comic builder

Rage was a popular comic series that featured characters like Me Gusta Guy and Forever Alone Guy. You must use this tool, if you prefer to work with Rage Guys. The tool is brought ti you by CheezBurger Network and Memebase.com.

QuickMeme

It is just like memegenerator.net. You can easily browse the most popular memes through home page in the featured list. You can also design random memes and you favorite memes. You just need to click ‘make a meme’ in order to browse different memes and then select the image and start designing your own caption.

Memegenerator.net

This is the most popular toll to design meme. You can also browse to the memes that are created by others and can look to different images, characters that are newest and popular. Just click to ‘generate an image’ and start creating your own meme.

DIYLOL

The popular meme maker stands for ‘Do It Yourself’ and ‘Laugh out Loud’. It will allow you to create star ratings ob meme and upload the image for meme and fill the captions. It also has an iPhone application for memes that will cost only $0.99 to be installed and you create the memes.

Troll.me

It is a great meme generator, which looks similar to zipmeme. You can also create account, login, memes and browse through variety of memes. You can put on just everything on your memes.

Meme Center

This is a particular type of meme generator, which allows you to create moving images (GIF). You must sign up a free account before starting this tool. Then you can start designing your meme by uploading the image to GIF maker or meme builder tool.

Meme Creator

This tool was started by memecreator.org, which moved to memecreator.com. Users can easily access both of the sites to use meme maker tools. There are simple option on the top of the menu- Home, Create, and Browse. You can select from the bunch of meme themes by using create option.

IB Memes

The service is given by Tumblr blog. You can select ‘create meme’ option from the menu top. It is a simple meme generator tool.



So if you are interested in designing the meme, choose any of the tools from above option. They will help you to design the best meme.If we missed out any do let us know in your comments.

Best budget smartphones under Rs 10,000

Phones under Rs. 10,000 offer some good features such as build quality, the ability to run a smartphone OS smoothly, access to a large number of apps, so on and so forth. On the other hand, to maintain the low price point, they compromise on some features such as the camera, display quality, built in storage and more. Here, we have shortlisted five products that will give you the best possible bang for your buck in the sub-Rs. 10,000 price range. There are feature phones on this list for those [...]

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Xolo launches the Q900 smartphone in India

Xolo has added the Q900 to its smartphone portfolio. The device is priced at Rs. 12,999 and is available to consumers in white. It has a 4.7-inch 720p display giving it a pixel density of 312ppi. We have seen the Nexus 4 showcase a 4.7-inch 720p display. Coming to the specifications, the Q900 runs on the MediaTek MT6589 chipset with the processor clocked at 1.2GHz. It also sports 1GB of RAM. It has 4GB built-in storage expandable up to 32GB via a microSD card. The Q900 is relatively slim measu [...]

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Hands on with the Asus Transformer Book T100 and the Asus FonePad 7

Asus today launched two devices – the Asus Transformer Book T100 priced at Rs. 34,099 and the Asus FonePad 7 priced at Rs. 17,499. Both the devices will be available to consumers in November. Asus FonePad 7 Starting off with the Asus FonePad 7, the device is a successor to the Asus FonePad we saw earlier this year. The tablet has a 7-inch IPS display with 1280x800 pixel resolution. It will be available in two colours – black and white. In its look and feel, the Asus FonePad is ver [...]

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BBM clocks 20 million users on Android and iOS, within a week

Within a week of the official availability of the BlackBerry Messenger on Android and iOS, the company says that that 20 million active users are on board, and using the cross platform BBM. Add the 60+ million users currently using BBM on BlackBerry smartphones, and the overall number now crosses 80 million. The BBM for iPhone and Android saw 10 million downloads in the first 24 hours of being available on the App Store and the Play Store, and similar momentum has carried through the rest of the [...]

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Custom Google+ URLs

Until now, vanity Google+ URLs were only for popular business, famous people, Google employees and some other special users. Now anyone can get a custom URL and replace the long Google+ URL with something more memorable. Unfortunately, you don't get to choose the URL: you can only pick from Google's preapproved URLs.



"If you meet the eligibility requirements, you can get a custom URL for your Google+ account or page. This means you can choose one of the custom URLs Google preassigns to your Google+ profile or page. Depending on the preassigned custom URL, you may also need to add a few letters or numbers to make it unique to you," explains Google.



For profiles, you need 10 or more followers, an account that is 30 days old or more and a profile photo. For pages, you need to link your page with your site or use Google+ Local and verify your local business.



Pages get Google+ URLs that are based on the site's URL. I got google.com/+GooglesystemBlogspot, but I haven't enabled it. Maybe Google will provide more options in the future.

"Once you meet the eligibility criteria, just visit your profile or page to begin the claiming process. If you don't see the option yet, don't worry: we're expanding availability throughout the week, and you'll see the in-product notice as soon as your custom URL is ready," informs Google's Otavio Silva.



{ Thanks, Tolis Nubis. }

300 Million Active Google+ Users

Google+ continues to grow and the growth rate is impressive, according to Google's stats. Back in December, Google announced that "235 million [people] are active across Google (+1'ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search), and 135 million are active in just the stream." Now Google says that 540 million people are active across Google+ each month and 300 million people are active in the Google+ stream.



The number of Google+ users doubled in less than a year. Even if you use the conservative stream data and conclude that Google+ only has 300 million active users, that's still a lot. No other social network had so many users in 2 years and a half. Sure, Facebook has more than one billion active users, but the service got to 100 million users in 4 years.



Google has more than 1 billion users, so that's the upper boundary for Google+. It's unlikely that all the Google users will join Google+ and actively use it, but most of them will. Google+ is integrated with so many Google services and the YouTube integration will bring a lot more Google+ users. Google+ is now at the heart of Google's photo service, messaging service, local search and it will soon power core features of the most popular video sharing service.

Auto Awesome Action, Eraser and Movie

Auto Awesome is a collection of features that create new images which use the photos you upload: panoramas, animations, HDR, better group photos. They're created automatically and Google now even sends notifications when they're ready.



There are 3 new Auto Awesome features: 2 of them are only for photos (action, eraser) and the third one is for both photos and videos.



Action is great for action photos. "Take a series of photos of someone moving (dancing, running, jumping) and Auto Awesome will merge them together into one action shot where you can see the full range of movements in a single image, capturing the movement in one captivating still."



Google combines these 6 photos:

and creates this awesome visual effect:

Eraser is useful when you want to remove people from photos. "If you take a sequence of 3 or more photos in front of a structure or landmark with movement in the background, Eraser will give you a photo with all the moving objects removed. It's helpful for those situations when you're trying to get a great shot of a landmark or other crowded place, but want to avoid including all of the people in the background of your photo."



These photos aren't great:

but they can be combined to get this:

Auto Awesome Movie is a bit like HTC Zoe, but it's a lot more advanced. In fact, it's the only Auto Awesome feature that lets you customize the result and the only feature you can trigger manually. Google creates a video that combines some of the videos and photos you uploaded, processes the videos, adds image stabilization and picks some appropriate music. "You can create Auto Awesome movies from the Google Photos app for Android, which are short films created automatically by editing together the videos and photos you capture around an experience. Choose the photos and videos you wish to make into an Auto Awesome movie, and let Google do the rest. You can change the theme, style, background music, or even remove, shorten, or re-order scenes. After your movie is created, you can choose to share or save it. Auto Awesome movies are currently only available for some devices running Android 4.3 and up, including the Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and HTC One."

Auto Awesome shows that advanced features don't need complicated interfaces. It also shows the power of the cloud: Google+ Photos finds your best photos, enhances your photos, it lets you search your photos and it even creates new ones. All of this without buying expensive photo editors and learning how to use them.