Polaroid?s Z340 Isn?t Quite The Gaga-Inspired Beauty We Saw At CES

Back at CES, we spent a long time waiting for Lady Gaga to show up (again) and introduce her new product line, a collaboration with Polaroid called Grey Label. The camera sunglasses and Bluetooth printer didn't exactly blow our socks off, but the GL30 camera prototype sure did. It was beautiful. Of course, no matter how much I bugged Polaroid, I never got word one about availability or what have you. And then this thing turns up! Now, I'm not convinced this is the same product we saw at CES. A relative of that product, perhaps, but not the real thing. I refuse to believe that they'd throw away a perfectly good design like that, one associated with Gaga herself. So what is this?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Kp3CSezoPSY/

Nicola Kohnen Laura Ungricht Edith Berner Lea Linden

VMware adds Mozy to its cloud and virtualization empire

mozy vmware
Mozy is one of the most popular cloud backup services around, with more than one million users storing around 70 petabytes of data. Its popularity apparently put it on the acquisition radar of VMware -- which has now made Mozy part of its virtualization empire.

VMware's official blog post makes it clear that the company wasn't so much interested in Mozy as a consumer offering. Rather, it's the inner workings of Mozy which piqued VMware's curiosity. CTO Steve Herrod says, "Over the past 5 years, Mozy has built one of the best examples of a globally distributed, large-scale cloud offering." He adds that the move will allow VMware to "further ramp our own cloud-related learning and accelerate new IP, scale, and capabilities" of its existing offerings.

Existing Mozy customers don't need to worry, of course. VMware has pledged to continue running Mozy's service without interruption.

VMware adds Mozy to its cloud and virtualization empire originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/05/vmware-takes-over-operation-of-mozy/

Frederik Faulhaber Svenja Hoferichter Carola Auer Luca Liebe

Verizon?s Wireless Home Phone Connect Review

For those long-time readers, you might remember my rant/question about Comcast charging too much for their multimedia services (i.e., HDTV, phone, and internet) last year. Well, I am finally getting around to cutting the cord. We will be keeping Comcast high speed internet but our household is giving up cable TV and switching home phone [...]

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2011/07/25/verizons-wireless-home-phone-connect-review/

Ulrike Kellner Nicola Kohnen Laura Ungricht Edith Berner

The Government Will Pay Doctors $44,000 to Use an iPad [Video]

The Obama administration strongly desires that all medical records be electronic. There's a much-lauded app called drchrono for the iPad which can make that transition happen. Logically, the government will toss up to $44,000 to any doctor willing to use it. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/LdSghbunXGM/the-government-will-pay-doctors-44000-to-use-an-ipad

Ingeburg Liebermann Elsa Alexander Furtmann Siegrid Holstein Michael Vollmar

How Secure is My Password lets you know just that

howsecureismypassword
We've all heard it before; you need to select a lengthy password, one that's hard to guess. Not a dictionary word. And it has to have some capital letters in it too, and some digits, and a symbol or two won't hurt either.

That's a handy set of rules to keep in mind, but How Secure is My Password helps us understand why they're important.

It's basically like a full-screen version of one of those password-strength meters websites sometimes use. But instead of showing you a bar going from "weak" to "strong", it shows you an estimation of how long your password would take to crack. That's a much more visceral way to understand why your password is strong.

For example, when I entered "rabbit", it came back with "your password is one of the 500 most common passwords. It could be cracked almost instantly". "rabbit5" would take two hours, "$rabbit5" would take 38 days, and "$rabbitZ5" would take 237 years. It's quite enlightening to see what a difference three simple characters can make.

How Secure is My Password lets you know just that originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/05/how-secure-is-my-password-lets-you-know-just-that/

Laura Ungricht Edith Berner Lea Linden Kevin Fickenscher

Daily Crunch: Fiend Edition

Hot Cool Box: Thanko?s USB Mini Fridge Doubles As Heater Starbucks Merges Their Two iOS Apps, Lets You Gift Your Friends Coffee From Your Phone IBM Takes Another Step Towards Reliable Phase-Change Memory Samsung?s Galaxy Tab 8.9 Hits The FCC How Making Can Help Our Economy, Improve Education, And Make Us Happy

Source: http://www.crunchgear.com/2011/07/01/daily-crunch-fiend-edition/

Heidemarie Frick Maike Beetz Fiona Henschel Joshua Heinlein

Personal Activity Monitor tracks time you spend using desktop apps

personalactivitymonitor
Up until a couple of years ago, I used to turn to RescueTime to figure out how I spend my time online. Then it got too complex, and I stopped using it. Personal Activity Monitor is like a vastly dumbed-down version of RescueTime, and I mean that as a compliment. It's free and bare-bones -- all it does is track what applications you're using and for how long.

A big drawback at this point is that it doesn't integrate with Web browsers to help you analyze how you spend your time on the Web. Still, if your work doesn't require constant Web app use, knowing how long you've used a browser overall might be enough to help you manage your time.

This is far from the only application in this space -- alternatives such as Slife and Chrometa are full-featured and impressive -- but PAM is good option for those who want a nice, simple tracker.

Personal Activity Monitor tracks time you spend using desktop apps originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 05 Mar 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/05/personal-activity-monitor-lets-you-quickly-see-what-you-spend-ti/

Arno Zimmerling Jacqueline Kiesel Michel Rohr Hilde Baaden

Libra for Android helps you track your weight using The Hacker's Diet system

libra
I'm getting fat; that's what you see on the screenshot to the right -- my gradual move from chubby to portly. But never mind the numbers, look at the pretty graph!

If you've ever read The Hacker's Diet, this graph should be instantly recognizable. Each point shows the weight for a given day, while the trend line lets you see if you're gaining or losing weight.

When I use my "main" PC, I have a homebrew solution for creating and maintaining this graph. But I've had to find a temporary solution for Android, and Libra is it.

It's a beautifully simple app, very true to the spirit of The Hacker's Diet. You can create a shortcut on your homescreen that brings you right into the data entry screen, so you just tap the shortcut every morning, feed in your weight for the day and hit OK, and then you get to see your progress (or lack thereof) on the graph.

The app remembers the previous day's weigh-in, which makes it easy to enter today's weight (as they're usually not too different). The graph is zoomable and scrollable, and most importantly, you can export the data to CSV so you're not locked into the app.

If you ever need to track your weight using an Android device for any period of time, Libra is one excellent solution.

Libra for Android helps you track your weight using The Hacker's Diet system originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/31/libra-for-android-helps-you-track-your-weight-using-the-hackers/

Edith Hupertz Heinrich Peller Viktoria Barz Emma Sauter

Future iPhones, like Superman, to be powered by the sun?

Future iPhones, like Superman, to be powered by the sun?The on again, off again Digitimes rumour-mill claims both Apple and manufacturing-partner/device competitor Samsung are looking into solar cells as a future power source. Samsung and Apple have been evaluating the possible niche market for solar-powered consumer products and considering the inclusion of Taiwan-based solar firms in their respective supply chains. However, according to Taiwan-based [...]

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/qc0ZPDPvhPE/

Heidemarie Frick Maike Beetz Fiona Henschel Joshua Heinlein