Samsung and Google sitting in a tree

from Greg
Samsung and Google have been in legal battle for years over patents. They announced today a 10 year deal to share patents. This is good news for both companies but particularly Samsung. This ensures a decade of innovation in the Galaxy phone line and Motorola products. 

Check out two great cell phone deal HERE

from Samsung
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. and Google Inc. today furthered their long-term cooperative partnership with a global patent cross-license agreement covering a broad range of technologies and business areas. The mutually beneficial agreement covers the two companies’ existing patents as well as those filed over the next 10 years.

 “We’re pleased to enter into a cross-license with our partner Samsung,” said Allen Lo, Deputy General Counsel for Patents at Google. “By working together on agreements like this, companies can reduce the potential for litigation and focus instead on innovation.”

 With this agreement, Samsung and Google gain access to each other’s industry-leading patent portfolios, paving the way for deeper collaboration on research and development of current and future products and technologies.

 “This agreement with Google is highly significant for the technology industry,” said Dr. Seungho Ahn, the Head of Samsung’s Intellectual Property Center. “Samsung and Google are showing the rest of the industry that there is more to gain from cooperating than engaging in unnecessary patent disputes.”

Related articles

• Samsung And Google Bury The Apple Hatchet, Sign 10-Year Patent Agreement
• Global patent agreement reached by Samsung and Google
• Samsung And Google Bury The Android Hatchet, Sign 10-Year Patent Agreement

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Parental Controls

from Greg
Gizmodo has a great how to guide on how to set the parental controls on every popular mobile platform. Time to put some protection on all the Xmas gadgets you bought the kids!

from Gizmodo
Read the full story HERE
How to Install Parental Controls on All of Your Gadgets
by Andrew Tarantola

Windows
Windows relies on Microsoft's Family Safety website and its companion desktop program to handle user access control. You'll be able to set individual accounts per child and limit their access to risky websites, monitor what sites they visit (or, at least, try to), and limit the amount of time they spend on games and other applications.

If you're on Windows 8, Scroll your mouse to the right edge of the screen and select Settings from the pop-out menu. For Windows 7, see if it's already installed by searching for Windows Live Family Safety from the Start menu—otherwise just download it.
Select Control Panel -> Family Safety -> Manage settings on the Family Safety Website.
Login to the family safety account using your Windows credentials (the ones you use to access your computer).
Select which accounts you want to control, setting up individual accounts per child as needed. Make sure that you set passwords for each account and turn off guest browsing as it can be used to bypass these controls.
Set the permissions for each kid by clicking Edit Settings under each of their names and activating the appropriate functions.

OSX
Unlike Windows, OSX Mavericks integrates all of its parental controls into the OS itself rather than rely on an external website. And in addition to monitoring and limiting your kid's surfing habits, you can also limit who they can interact with to defend against cyber bullies and pervs.

Select Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Parental Controls
Enter your Admin credentials
For an existing user, click Enable Parental Controls, and then set up the controls. Add new users by clicking Add at the bottom of the user list and entering a name and password for the new account.
For each account, you can set age rating limits for opening apps from the App Store in the Apps section, limit what websites can be visited in Safari in the Web section, who they can interact with in the Game Center and contact via email in the People section, and set time limits for general computer use and specific programs in the Time Limits section.

Chrome OS
As with Windows and OSX you'll need to set up individual accounts and login credentials for each child. Also be sure to turn off guest browsing before you get started.

Log into the Chromebook as the Admin account (the one you used when setting up the device)
Add additional users by clicking the Add Users button in the bottom left corner of the screen.
Open Chrome, go to chrome.com/manage, and sign in with your admin account.
Select Manage and set specific permissions for each kid's account, dubbed Supervised Users, as well as view their browsing history and respond to requests to unblock specific websites.
To restrict websites, select All of the web or Only specified sites under "Allow". You can enable or disable all of a site's sub domains—ie
paleofuture.gizmodo.com or gifmodo.gizmodo.com—all in one fell swoop by replacing the sub domain with an asterisk, as in *.gizmodo.com. Put the asterisk after the host (www.gizmodo.uk -> www.gizmodo.*) to disable sites in specific countries.

Additionally, you can force enable Safe Search from the manager as well

Android
If you want to control what your kids do on Android, the device will need to be running version 4.3 Jelly Bean which basically limits it to Nexus series phones and tablets.

Open Settings either from the App Drawer or by swiping down from the top right edge of the device -> click Add User or Profile -> Select Restricted Profile.
Tap the settings icon next to New profile to name the account and select which apps will be available to it using the neighboring toggle switch. Be warned, the system does not filter websites so if you're worried about little Johnny learning about the birds and the bees from BangBros, don't approve the use of browsers for that account.
If you don't have the latest and greatest Google gadget, don't worry. Google Play is packed with third party parental control apps., just search for "parental control". Kid's Place and Norton Family are both quite popular and quite free.
[Android]

iOS
Open Settings -> General -> Restrictions
Enable restrictions if you haven't already by tapping the radio button at the top of the screen and setting an access password that only you should know.
Below the Enable Restrictions button, you'll see a list of available apps. Work your way through dictating which can and cannot be access without your authorization password.
The subsequent sections allow you to set limits on in-app purchases, allowed content, and privacy settings such as turning off GPS or using third party apps.
Kindle Fire

Open Quick Settings by swiping down from the top of the screen, select Settings -> Parental Controls
Set up an Admin password that your kids won't be able to guess.
Set restrictions on the following features:
Web browsing
The Email, Contacts, and Calendars apps
Social network sharing
The camera
The ability to purchase from the content stores on your device (for example, the Amazon Appstore)
The ability to play movies and TV shows from Amazon Instant Video
Specific content types (for example, Books or Apps)
Wireless connectivity
Location-Based Services
You'll now be able to access all of these features while preventing your kids from doing so by simply entering you Admin password when prompted.

Xbox One
Setting up parental controls on an XB1 is very similar to setting them up on Windows 8.

Sign in to your console.
On your controller, press the Menu button -> select Settings.
Scroll right to Family, then select the child profile that you want to modify, then set permissions for various features including content rating restrictions, web browsing, and whehter or not their bio shows up in the OneGuide. You can also set specific permissions for each section by selecting Use, but customize.
And if you're rocking both an XB1 and a 360, you can control access for both using a single interface, thereby applying restrictions simultaneously to both systems, through the XBox Live website.

Playstation 4
Log in to your Master Account and make sure you password protect that account to prevent your kids from reversing the restrictions you set as well as set a 4-digit Parental controls passcode. Both are found under Settings -> Parental Controls
Set up sub accounts for each kid under Settings -> Parental Controls -> Manage Sub Accounts and dictate what restrictions will be present on each.
From this sub menu, you can restrict games, apps, and movies by age rating; turn off the web browser and disable voice, video, or text chats; prevent guest log ins (which you should); set spending limits in the Playstation Store, and restrict user-generated content.

Related articles

• How to Install Parental Controls on All of Your Gadgets
• How to Use a Picture as a Password in Windows 8.1
• Five-minute fix: Setting up parental controls on Windows 8
• Blog Post: Maximising your work productivity can be child's play

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Google Amazing

from Greg
Google has a new interactive timeline of music history out today. It was created by the Google Big Picture Group. It really shows what cutting edge presentations should look like. I have also included a link to a DDOS attack map project. If you do web development or presentation work you need to take a look at these. Amazing!

from Google
Music Timeline - Soundtracks see it HERE Updated Weekly

What is the Music Timeline?
The Music Timeline shows genres of music waxing and waning, based on how many Google Play Music users have an artist or album in their music library, and other data (such as album release dates). Each stripe on the graph represents a genre; the thickness of the stripe tells you roughly the popularity of music released in a given year in that genre. (For example, the "jazz" stripe is thick in the 1950s since many users' libraries contain jazz albums released in the '50s.) Click on the stripes to zoom into more specialized genres.

Where does the data come from?
The Music Timeline is based on album and artist statistics aggregated from Google Play Music — we define popularity by how many users have an artist or album in their music library.

Digital Attack Map see it HERE Updated Daily

Digital Attack Map is a live data visualization of DDoS attacks around the globe, built through a collaboration between Google Ideas and Arbor Networks. The tool surfaces anonymous attack traffic data to let users explore historic trends and find reports of outages happening on a given day.

Why? DDoS Attacks Matter
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks can be used to make important online information unavailable to the world. Sites covering elections are brought down to influence their outcome, media sites are attacked to censor stories, and businesses are taken offline by competitors looking for a leg up. Protecting access to information is important for the Internet and important for free expression.

Related articles

• UDP-based DDoS (DNS, NTP, etc.,) - on the rise?
• DDoS Attacks Target Network Timing Protocol
• Mobile devices become launchpads for DDoS attacks
• Battle.net & League of Legends services down, following DDoS attacks
• Dropbox Issues Outage Post-Mortem But Makes No Mention Of DDoS Attack

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Google Glass Legal Driving

from Greg
Google Glasses are more of a challenge for the legal profession than the engineers. Police in California are ticketing people driving cars while wearing Google Glasses. A judge finally gets involved and asks the most important question: How do you know the device was on officer? Case dismissed!

from engadet
Read the full story HERE
Pay attention to the road. At least, until the cars are able to drive themselves. That's the rule, and it was probably one of the reasons why Google Glass early-adopter Cecilia Abadie got ticketed for donning the wearable at the wheel. It was a second citation, alongside speeding, although it was dismissed by San Diego Court Commissioner John Blair, noting that: "There is no testimony it was operating or in use while Ms. Abadie was driving." However, he did say earlier that Google's wearable did however, fall "within the purview and intent" of the state's ban on driving with a monitor. This particular case might have been dismissed on lack of evidence, but we reckon those wider implications (and resultant legal tussles) are far from over.

Related articles

• Court clears woman over wearing Google Glass while driving
• Judge dismisses ticket for driving with Google Glass
• I really hope "driving while Google Glass'ing" becomes a thing because fuck this lady
• Woman ticketed for driving wearing Google Glass found not guilty

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What is a Chromebook?

from Greg
A Chromebook is a computer that runs entirely on Chrome the Google browser / operating system. No Windows or Mac operating system is installed. It backs up files onto the cloud instead of on a local hard drive. While this makes your data much more secure it also makes the laptop highly dependent on an internet connection.

Chromebooks may become more mainstream in the future as all software moves to the web. Right now they are best for students on wired campuses and rural or low income families that cannot get internet access wired to their homes.

Users must rely on online tools such as Google Drive and Microsoft Office Online to create documents. With the explosion in web based software there is no shortage of good (and often free) tools to use.

The laptops have good technical specs but it won't run Windows or Mac software out of the box. If you spend all your time on the web consider one. If you need specialty software (e.g. graphic design, video editing, playing high end games) then you need to get something different.

from HP and Google
Chromebooks are a unique class of mobile computing devices, designed specifically for Web-based tasks. They differ from traditional laptops in a few important ways:

Chromebooks run Web-based apps, not traditional PC applications.
Chromebooks are designed to be connected to the Internet. You can create documents and spreadsheets or edit photos on a Chromebook using Google apps designed for these purposes. The Chrome operating system will not load and run traditional PC software like Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop. However, files created in these applications can be viewed and edited using Google apps on your Chromebook or cloud-based applications like Microsoft’s Office web apps.

You store your files in the Cloud, not on the machine. To help make them thin and light, Chromebooks are built without large-capacity drives. So instead of storing your documents, videos, and photos on your computer, you save them to Google Drive (Google's Cloud-based storage service). Your files are password-protected and secure, and you can access them anywhere there's an Internet connection. If you know you'll want access to a file or photo offline, however, you can easily save it to the built-in solid-state drive.

Everything you need in one laptop. Clever touches like an extra bright screen and a charger that also works with your Android phone are designed to keep up with the things you do every day.

Relax with your favorite music, write a report using Google Docs, or put the finishing touches on a family video. Your Chromebook has 6 hours of battery life, slips easily into a bag or purse, and weighs just over 2 pounds – so it’s equally comfortable at home or keeping up with the things you do everyday.*

Chromebook starts in seconds, so you can go straight to playing or working (if you have to). Unlike traditional computers, Chromebook updates itself automatically so it doesn’t slow down over time. Browse the web at lightning speed with features like Chrome Instant and the Chrome Omnibox.

Video chats are loud and clear on digitally-tuned speakers. YouTube videos shine on the brilliant screen. And 100GB of free Google Drive storage safely stores all your stuff.** Your favorite Google apps are built-in, and there are lots of other apps available for free on the Chrome Web Store.

Your Chromebook is probably easier than any computer you’ve ever used – there’s no clutter, no waiting, and no nagging. It uses the same charger as most Android phones, starts up in seconds, and automatically stays up-to-date without interrupting you.


Tech Specs
Screen
11.6" IPS display with 16:9 aspect ratio
1366 x 768 pixel resolution
60% color gamut
300 nit screen
Wide viewing angle (176 degree)

Inputs
Chrome keyboard
Fine-tuned, clickable touchpad
VGA webcam
Ports
Two USB 2.0 ports
MicroUSB for 15.75W charging and SlimPort video output
Industrial Design
Magnesium chassis for strength
White with a blue accent color
Silent, fanless design
No visible screws, vents, or speakers

Size
297 x 192 x 17.6mm (not including feet)
Weight
2.30lb / 1.04kg

CPU
Exynos 5250 GAIA Application Processor

Memory
2GB (4x 4Gbit) DDR3 RAM
16GB Solid State Drive

Audio
Combined headphone / microphone jack
Digitally-tuned speakers with sound directed up through the keyboard

Battery
Your Chromebook has up to 6 hours of active use (30 Wh battery)*

Network
Dual-band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0

Goodies
100 GB Google Drive cloud storage, free for two years**
60-day free trial with Google Play Music All Access, and $9.99 per month after that***
12 free sessions of GoGo Inflight Internet****

Related articles

• Tech Outlook: Chromebooks
• Why Microsoft's Scroogled Ads Are Wrong About Chromebooks
• Google's Chromebooks Now Account for nearly a Quarter of all Notebook Sales
• Putting Chromebook Sales in Proper Perspective

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Google Chrome Updated

from Greg

Google just updated the Chrome browser. The full list of changes is below. However they made one change that is absolutely brilliant. When a tab is making noise (e.g. video starts playing) the tab will show you it is making noise. I cannot tell you how many times I have had to go through a batch of tab to find the one yelling. Great change Google.

from Google's Chrome team

Read the full Google announcement HERE

You can now track down noisy tabs: You can now visually scan your tabs for a speaker icon to quickly find the ones singing in the background. You’ll also be able to see which tabs are currently using your webcam or are being cast to your TV.

Safe Browsing's malware warning has gotten stronger: If you see this message in the download tray at the bottom of your screen, you can click “Dismiss” knowing that Chrome is working to keep you safe.

Try out supervised users for your family members: You can now use a beta preview of supervised users to help family members who may need some guidance browsing the web. Once you create a supervised user, you can visit chrome.com/manage to review their browsing activity and determine site restrictions.

Chrome on Windows 8 “Metro” mode gets a new look: Manage multiple Chrome windows and quickly get to your favorite Chrome Apps with an integrated app launcher.  On the desktop, we’ve updated the default styling of UI elements like form controls and scrollbars to match the sleek design of the new Chrome Metro interface.

Related articles

• HTTP Switchboard for Chrome Gives You More Control While Browsing
• Google releases Chrome 32 w/ tab indicators, new Win8 Metro design & more
• Chrome's latest update reveals which tabs are making noise
• Most Popular Chrome Extensions and Posts of 2013

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Google to acquire Nest

from Greg
Google to acquire Nest for $3.2 billion in cash. This is a great buy for the tech giant. Nest makes the best thermostat control you have ever seen. They allow you to adjust the temp with a smart phone.

Nest Labs is a home automation company that designs and manufactures sensor-driven, Wi-Fi-enabled, self-learning, programmable thermostats and smoke detectors. Co-founded by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers in 2010, the start-up company quickly grew to more than 130 employees by the end of 2012.


The company introduced their first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, in 2011. In October 2013, Nest Labs announced the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detector.

from Reuters
Read the full story HERE
Google Inc on Monday announced plans to acquire Nest Labs Inc, a maker of smart thermostats and smoke alarms, for $3.2 billion, signaling the Internet company's intention to expand into a broader array of devices and bringing valuable hardware design expertise in-house.

Nest, which was co-founded by one of the creators of Apple Inc's iconic iPod music player, will continue to operate as its own distinct brand after the all-cash deal closes, Google said.

The deal is the second-largest in Google's history, after the $12.5 billion acquisition of mobile phone maker Motorola.

"Nest Labs appears to be focused on thermostats and smoke alarms, but it's not far-fetched to see Google expanding this technology into other devices over time," said Shyam Patil, an analyst at Wedbush.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic with additional reporting by Noel Randewich and Poornima Gupta; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

from The Verge
Read the full story HERE

Google has just purchased Nest Labs, the maker of the Nest Learning Thermostat and Protect smoke detector, for $3.2 billion in cash. According to a Google press release, Nest will continue to operate independently under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Tony Fadell; co-founder Matt Rogers will also make the move to Google. While the transaction is subject to the usual regulatory review, Google says it expects the sale to close within the next few months. Google Ventures had already invested over $100 million in Nest, so the company has been on Mountain View's radar for some time now.

It's not yet clear exactly how Google plans to use Nest, but the company obviously sees it as an important part of its future. A combination of Nest's home solutions coupled with Google's language recognition could give Google its strongest path yet into your home. "Google will help us fully realize our vision of the conscious home and allow us to change the world faster than we ever could if we continued to go it alone," writes Fadell on the Nest blog. "We've had great momentum, but this is a rocket ship."

from Tech Crunch
Read the full story HERE

Google is acquiring connected device company Nest for $3.2B. Google sent out an email to employees noting the acquisition today and later issued a press release.

In the release, Google noted that Nest has been offering its best-selling thermostat since 2011 and recently began offering the Protect smoke alarm, which networks with its other devices.

Nest Founders Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers will both join Google. Rogers, pictured above, was one of the first engineers on the iPhone team at Apple.

“They’re already delivering amazing products you can buy right now–thermostats that save energy and smoke/CO alarms that can help keep your family safe,” said Google CEO Larry Page in a statement. “We are excited to bring great experiences to more homes in more countries and fulfill their dreams!”

Related articles

• Google Acquiring Tony Fadell-Founded Nest for $3.2 Billion
• Report: Google to acquire smart thermostat maker Nest for $3.2 billion
• Breaking: Google acquires digital device maker Nest for $3.2B
• Google buys Nest for $3.2B - its key to the connected home?

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