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Latest collection of news from a number of reliable sources.SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co raised its 2013 earnings outlook after quarterly results beat low expectations, as CEO Meg Whitman's turnaround plan helped offset shrinking personal computer sales with enterprise computing services.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Lenovo Group Ltd's bold acquisitions in its flagship PC business, a foray into mobile gadgets, and a relatively light debt load are setting it apart from PC rivals as industry shipments take their steepest fall in decades.
You can now scan in receipts and other important documents directly to Google Drive for Android.
(Credit: Google)Google Now is such a big deal that its interface sensibilities are spilling over into other Google services. The latest recipient of a healthy dose of Now is Google Drive (download), which updated its Android app on Wednesday with several new features.
A new Scan feature lets you back up and track important receipts, business cards, and documents by using existing optical character recognition (OCR) tech already in Drive. Choose Scan from the "Add New" menu, take a photo of the document, and Drive will automatically turn it into a searchable PDF.
Related stories:
- Get a 480GB internal SSD for $299.99, shipped
- Google I/O: What we didn't get
- Top mobile carriers join forces to stop texting while driving
The new interface leverages the Card look from Google+ and Google Play by creating more space between items.... [Read more]
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With high quality digital cameras on every smartphone and apps that make your pictures even better, just about anyone can be an accomplished photographer. Sure, you may not be an accomplished professional photographer, but you can certainly upload your images to photo sharing sites and receive feedback to make your shots even better.
As most people know, there are a number of popular services already out there that let you take your shot, add effects and other enhancements, then upload it for all to see. But the other thing that's great about photo sharing sites is the ability to browse through thousands of photographs and join the conversation in the comments. Seeing the world through others eyes has a voyeuristic quality and swimming through a sea of photographs can be incredibly addictive. So even if you're not an aspiring photographer or don't care about the social aspects of these services, you might just like to look at other people's work simply for the stories the images tell.
I rounded up a couple of the most popular photo sharing sites and put them together with some good quality lesser known services so you can decide which one is more up your alley.
Instagram (iPhone | Android) is a popular photo enhancement app that requires only a couple of touches to produce retro-l... [Read more]
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HONG KONG (Reuters) - Lenovo Group Ltd's bold acquisitions in its flagship PC business, a foray into mobile gadgets, and a relatively light debt load are setting it apart from PC rivals as industry shipments take their steepest fall in decades.
The popular LifeProof case joins the OtterBox family.
If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.
OtterBox, which struggled for months to bring a waterproof iPhone case to market, has acquired rival LifeProof, which makes one of the best -- and bestselling -- tough iPhone cases.
Colorado-based OtterBox has been a leading case manufacturer for a variety of smartphones and tablets and has quickly grown to employ 650 people worldwide. LifeProof, based in San Diego and founded in 2009 by Australian Gary Rayner, employees 250 people.
OtterBox says those 250 employees are now "members of the OtterBox family and will remain in their San Diego location for the foreseeable future." Over the next 30 days, OtterBox will begin incorporating the LifeProof brand into that OtterBox family.
LifeProof just unveiled a waterproof iPad Mini case at the CTIA trade show in Las Vegas (it's expected to ship in June for $99.99) and a LifeProof case for the Samsung Galaxy S4 is expected to ship by mid summer.
Terms of the deal weren't disclosed, but it was likely in the tens of millions of dollars and perhaps even more. In 2012, OtterBox had approximately $600 million in revenues. That was up from $10.8 million in 2008.
<... [Read more]
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Apple seems to be the target of government and media criticism, once again, for operating the same way every other company in the industry operates. Why does Apple get held to a higher standard in the headlines and in the Senate than its competition? And isn't there anyone willing to suggest that perhaps this treatment is not entirely fair? Of course there is.
U.S. Senate vs. Apple
On Monday, the New York Times published a report detailing Apple's off-shore tax practices, just in time to stir up public opinion for scheduled testimony from Apple to the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday. The article detailed the amount of money Apple allegedly avoided paying in taxes, and included several flamboyant comments from Senators and law professors who had plenty of snarky things to say about Cupertino. Also included in the article was a brief mention that Apple's tax practices are basically the exact same things being done by others in the tech industry, including Google, Amazon, and Yahoo, but the focus of the piece was to paint Apple as a legal-yet-problematic tax avoider.
In preparation for the hearing, Apple published a pair of documents featuring the opening statements of Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook (PDF) and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer (PDF). The statements focus on Apple's significant contributions to the US economy and defend overseas business practices. Oppenheimer's statement even details how close Apple came to disappearing forever in the late '90s by reminding the committee "I can tell you firsthand, we were facing the very real possibility of a world without Apple."
The Senators present at the hearing, however, picked up right where the NYT article left off, and blistered Apple with what the Washington Post called "righteous indignation." All of the Senators, that is, except for one: Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).
Don't make me filibuster up in here.
"Frankly, I’m offended by the tone and tenor of this hearing," Sen. Paul stated. "I’m offended by a $4 trillion government bullying, berating and badgering one of America’s greatest success stories."
Sen. Paul went on to point the finger at his colleagues, stating that Apple was operating as best it could inside of a severely flawed tax system that Congress has done nothing to fix. "If anyone should be on trial here, it should be Congress," Sen. Paul continued. "I frankly think the committee should apologize to Apple. The Congress should be on trial here for creating a Byzantine and bizarre tax code."
In a long prepared testimony, though not as long as others he has provided, Sen. Paul made clear that Apple was not being accused of violating any laws whatsoever, and implied that the entire hearing, much like the NYT piece that preceded it, was being done for hype and publicity.
"This committee will admit: Apple has not broken any laws," Paul said. "Yet they are forced into a show trial at the whims of politicians, when in fact; Congress should be on trial for chasing the profits of great American companies overseas."
Sen. Paul went on to pose the rhetorical question, "You haul before this committee one of America’s greatest success stories, and you want applause?"
Clearly Apple could not have originated or prospered without the talent and infrastructure that exists in the U.S., and the shell-game accounting methods that Cupertino uses to shelter taxes feel somewhat ungrateful. But singling out Apple as a problem while glossing over the fact that this is what many U.S. tech companies do, and ignoring the fact that the bigger problem lies in the tax code itself, seems disingenuous and self-serving.
In this situation, if anyone deserves applause for calling out the hypocrisy and speaking the truth, it is Sen. Rand Paul.
Follow the writer, Adrian Hoppel, on Facebook.
Other tablets might be making inroads into Apple's dominance of the tablet market, but if the Ecommerce Quarterly released by Monetate this morning serves as any indication, they have a heck of a long way to go. As reported by Apple Insider, iPads account for a staggering nine out of 10 tablets used to access e-commerce sites in 2013's first quarter. That's down a mere 2.4 percent from last year during the same quarter.
All total, Monetate's findings revealed that Apple's iPad currently accounts for 89.28 percent of all tablet traffic to e-commerce sites. According to the report, during the same period Android tablet usage grew by 4.75 percent to grab an 8.20 percent share of the traffic, while the Amazon Kindle fell from 3.58 percent to 2.51 percent.
Image source: Monetate Ecommerce Quarterly report for Q1 2013/Apple Insider
In addition, the report revealed that iPad users are more likely to spend more online than users of others tablets, according to Monetate's sampling of 500 million shopping experiences drawn from sites like Best Buy, Frontier Airlines, Aeropostale, The Sports Authority and PETCO. On average, individual Apple tablet users spent $99.05 while users of the Kindle and Android tablets averaged out at $95.48 and $83.58 respectively.
And business is apparently booming. The use of tablets to access ecommerce sites shot up from 5.95 percent to 10.58 percent in the year between the first quarters of 2012 and 2013, with tablets remaining slightly more popular than cell phones for browsing ecommerce sites. (Desktop computers unsurprisingly retain the edge here, with a 78.13 percent hold on the market in first quarter of 2013.)
Follow this article's writer, Leif Johnson, on Twitter.
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland's finance minister said the country would not be the "whipping boy" for what he called a flawed U.S. Senate report that said Irish loopholes helped technology giant Apple shrink its tax bill.
Changes to Chrome 27 for Android deliver search tweaks.
(Credit: Google)Google has made searching in Chrome for Android a bit easier with an update Wednesday to the browser.
The latest stable version of Google Chrome 27 for Android (download) now displays search queries in the location bar's Omnibox. The change obfuscates the URL display during searches, to show more results and make it easier to tweak the search terms, according to the Google blog announcing the update.
Another tweak hides the location bar entirely once you start scrolling, so that you can view a Web page in fullscreen. History viewing has finally made it to the tablet version of Android Chrome, viewable by long-pressing the browser's back button. The full changelog for Chrome 27 for Android is here.
Voice search improved in Chrome 27 for iOS.
(Credit: Google) For Chrome on iOS (download), the update will bring the kind of voice search that ... [Read more]
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WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Dish Network Corp is ramping up its Washington-centric campaign to thwart Japanese firm SoftBank Corp's bid for Sprint Nextel Corp, hoping to convince lawmakers and government reviewers that it poses national security risks.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For years, Apple Inc kept a low profile in Washington as it grew into one of the most valuable companies in the world. Now the iPad maker has taken the lead, perhaps inadvertently, on a top priority for U.S. business: simplifying America's tax code.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co raised its 2013 earnings outlook after quarterly results beat low expectations, as CEO Meg Whitman's turnaround plan helped offset shrinking personal computer sales with enterprise computing services.
Like predecessors Anomaly: Warzone Earth and Anomaly Korea, 11 Bit Studios’ Anomaly 2 turns classic tower defense upside down. Instead of fortifying a base with turrets, cannons, and soldiers, Anomaly 2 places you in command of the incoming horde. Armed with a combat suit capable of setting up decoys, detonating EMP pulses, and healing units, you'll be tasked with leading a convoy of tanks, armored mechs, drones, and mobile labs through hostile territory, blasting through metallic alien defenses to clear roads or liberate important objectives.
As the third entry in the series, Anomaly 2 has firm command of the game’s basic conceits: Missions, friendly units, and enemy types are varied and work well together, and the large maps are flexible enough to support multiple play styles. For example, enemy Chargers are vulnerable to missile attacks, and if your squad isn't equipped to handle them, you can call in new units on the fly or avoid the fight altogether by changing the convoy's route.
With new waves of enemies spawning and objectives changing mid-battle, playing Anomaly 2 often feels like putting out multiple fires at once. Quick hands and good timing are often as important as critical thinking and sound tactics, and Anomaly 2 addresses our biggest gripe about its forebears: Lieutenant Simon Lynx has never been easier to control. Getting through Anomaly’s long, arduous missions is satisfying, but suffering a loss – or worse, a game crash – after 20 minutes of chipping away is frustrating, especially since the difficulty ramps up significantly toward the end of the campaign.
Anomaly 2’s story mode is a prelude to its new, intricate multiplayer mode, which pits a convoy (a "Squad") against a player-controlled alien installation (the "Towers"). The defense-oriented aliens play more like traditional tower defense or real-time strategy games, as you must gather resources, create chokepoints, and unlock new towers to succeed. While multiplayer matches can be difficult to find, dedicated players will find a fast-paced affair with the nuances expected from the genre. The campaign mode is great training for Squad players, however the complex Tower mechanics suffer from a lack of tutorials or a single-player component.
The bottom line. Anomaly 2 improves on earlier games in the series and puts enough spin on the tower defense genre to attract new players and veterans alike.
The HTC Desire X may be followed by the Desire 600.
(Credit: CBS Interactive)A pair of yet-to-be-announced HTC smartphones surfaced this week, tipping the hardware maker's future plans.
Related stories:
An HTC 102e currently getting its certification (translate) in Taiwan may prove to be a variation of the rumored G2.
Details show the handset as having a 3.5-inch 320x480 display, a 1GHz single-core processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, and a 5MP rear camera. Powered by Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, the entry-level device should feature a microSD expansion card and a 1400mAh battery. The 102e reportedly will debut as the Desire 200 and could be exclusive to the Asian market.
An HTC Desire 600, which promises to offer a more powerful and ... [Read more]
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(Reuters) - Twitter Inc unveiled technology to boost security for its users, following a spate of attacks on accounts of prominent media outlets including the Associated Press, the Financial Times and The Onion.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - Lenovo Group Ltd's bold acquisitions in its flagship PC business, a foray into mobile gadgets, and a relatively light debt load are setting it apart from PC rivals as industry shipments take their steepest fall in decades.
For a mere $2.99 per month, Groovebook delivers a perforated flip-book of a whopping 100 photos, all uploaded from your smartphone.
(Credit: Groovebook)The other day I told you about an app that lets you order Polaroid-style prints from your iPhone -- for 99 cents apiece.
Today, let's talk quantity. If you snap a lot of photos and frequently hit up, say, Snapfish or Walgreens for big batches of prints, I've got an interesting deal for you.
For a limited time, you can get a free 100-photo flip-book from Groovebook when you apply coupon code CNETGROOVE at checkout. That's a colossal savings of...wait for it...$2.99!
No, seriously. Without that code, a 100-photo flip-book would cost you exactly $2.99. Shipped. What kind of crazy craziness is this? I'll explain.
After installing the Groovebook app (Android|iOS), you simply choose up to 100 photos from your camera roll, then wait (for what promises to be a while) for them to upload.
<... [Read more]
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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co raised its 2013 earnings outlook after beating low expectations, as CEO Meg Whitman's turnaround plan helped to shore up profits and offset shrinking personal computer sales with enterprise computing services.
[This is an advertorial. Maclife gets a portion of each unit sold.]
You want a pair of headphones that will stick with you everywhere you go. From providing you a soundtrack during your work day to giving you the motivation to finish that last mile of your run, your headphones are an essential tool that travels with you every day. If you want to make sure they're comfortable and provide a quality listening experience, grab the Apple Depot Earbuds with Remote. It's on sale in our latest Deal.
Keep the great audio coming no matter what you're doing with the Apple Depot Earbuds with Remote. These headphones are built with the goal of creating the perfect listening experience, with a form that is not only fit for comfort but also for delivering great sound straght into your ears. Never miss a beat with the crystal clear sound that they provide, and keep them in your ears for hours without feeling discomfort. It's the perfect combination.
The Apple Depot Earbuds with Remote usually retail for $35. If you head to our Deals tab, you can save yourself 57% off of that price. That means you pay just $15 for these top notch earbuds. That is a deal you can't miss, so grab it today.
