Snapchat has solved one of the most annoying problems with mobile video so you
can finally record your dance parties, even if you’re the DJ.
The company has been experimenting for some time with ways to better
integrate music into its application. Today it’s launching a new feature
that allows you to record video while playing music from your phone,
rather than the music pausing. You can listen to jams from iTunes, Spotify,
SoundCloud, or any other app while recording.
The feature has just rolled out to iOS with the release of Snapchat
version 9.2.0, but has yet to appear in the Android version hosted now
on Google Play.
The smartphone is the most successful consumer device ever.
Deloitte
predicts that one billion smartphones will be purchased as upgrades for
the first time in 2015, generating over $300 billion in sales.
The quantity of smartphones bought as upgrades is unparalleled among
consumer electronics devices. In 2015 smartphone sales will be greater
in units and revenues than the PC, television, tablet and games console
sectors combined. What’s more, according to Deloitte’s research,
undertaken in May-June 2014, about seven in ten smartphone owners in 14
developed markets had upgraded their phone in the previous 18 months.
This is more frequent than for any other consumer electronics device,
which may surprise in view of the fact that in 2015 most smartphone
owners are likely to spend more time looking at TV screens, and
information workers and students may spend more time looking at PC
screens. However, the smartphone is the most personal of consumer
electronics devices: the most constant companion, the most personal of
choices, the most customized and reflective of the owners, the least
likely to be shared with other users, and the most frequently looked at.
In addition, the huge production volumes of smartphones manufactured
make this the most competitive market among devices, undergoing the most
substantive technical improvement on a year-by-year basis. Assessing
the smartphone upgrade market from a purely technical perspective, it
might be concluded that most existing owners do not ‘need’ a new device.
But this assessment is too narrow; there is a wide spread of
motivations, practical and emotional, which will drive the billion
upgrades we anticipate for 2015 and the 1.15 billion for 2016.
A new web protocol that promises to speed up internet browsing has been approved.
The changeover to HTTP/2, when it happens, will be the first major update to the standard in 15 years.
The Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) has accepted the protocol, one of its senior members wrote in a blogpost on Wednesday.
The standard will now go on to be edited before being applied, Mark Nottingham added.
Its developers believe the new standard will represent a big
step forward because it will make pages load quicker and improve
encryption.
Making HTTP/2 succeed means that it has to work with the existing web.
Apple’s
MacBook Air is the ultimate ultralight laptop and the only ultralight
for Mac users. Windows users have more options. Like the new Asus
Zenbook UX305.
The
Zenbook is one of the thinnest and lightest notebooks around, and with a
starting price of N150K, it’s N65K less than Apple’s 13-inch MacBook
Air.
It’s a good machine, but sadly there are tradeoffs.
A beauty with some warts
At
2.6 pounds, the aluminum Zenbook is about a third of a pound lighter
than the MacBook Air. But it’s about the same size: 12.8 x 8.9 x 0.5
inches, compared with the Apple’s 12.8 x 8.9 x 0.7 inches. The
difference in weight comes from the fact that the Zenbook doesn’t use as
many internal parts as the MacBook, a result of the processor used in
the Zenbook.
Lenovo’s
Yoga 3 Pro, another superthin laptop, offers the same dimensions and
weight as Asus’s Zenbook and doubles as a tablet. However, at $1,299,
the Lenovo costs nearly twice as much as the Asus and $300 more than the
MacBook Air.
Outside
of Apple, Asus easily makes some of the most attractive laptops on the
market. As with its predecessors, the Zenbook UX305’s cover features a
large ASUS logo ringed by a series of concentric circles. It’s a
beautiful design that gives the laptop a decidedly upscale look.
Zenbook looks great, but it’s an absolute fingerprint magnet.
Screen
The
Zenbook’s 13-inch, 1920 x 1080 resolution display offers crisp, sharp
text and images, but there are issues with its anti-glare matte coating.
Matte
screens are great for using in direct sunlight or under bright office
lights because they are less reflective, but they make colors look
duller. A glossy screen (as on a MacBook Air) shows bright, vibrant
colors but can be tough to see under bright lights.
If you’re
the kind of person who needs to use your computer outside, a matte
screen will likely be a better choice.
When Robin Williams died last August, people around the world rushed
online to mourn the loss of the actor. “Oh dear God. The wonderful Robin
Williams has gone,” Bette Midler tweeted. “No words,” added a somber Billy Crystal.
“Shame. I liked Jumanji,” tweeted one England-based Twitter user. “Good
movie. Loved it as a kid,” replied an account with the handle
@Mujahid4life.
“Mujahid,”
for those unfamiliar, roughly translates to “jihadist warrior.” And
this particular handle belonged to a 19-year-old British-born guy by the
name of Abdullah, who happened to be both a supporter of the Islamic
State and a big Robin Williams fan.
Abdullah’s opinion of the fallen star unleashed a torrent of blog posts,
most of which marveled at the fact that a member of an organization
that openly beheads its enemies could also have the emotional capacity
to mourn a U.S. comedian on Twitter. But however surreal it was to watch
Hollywood actors and terrorist sympathizers tangle online, those
voyeuristic bloggers missed a larger point. That moment encapsulated a
key pillar of the group’s now infamous social media fortress: Spreading
extremist ideology doesn’t need to start with religious screeds and
beheadings. It starts — as a social media 101 instructor might say — by
simply taking part in the conversation.
It’s
been less than a year since IS burst onto the stage, seizing large
amounts of territory and shocking the world with its brutally violent
tactics. During that time, the group has evolved into a highly
sophisticated multimedia organization, boasting slick social media
strategies that could give major corporate marketing teams a run for
their money. IS knows how to package its extremist ideology in the form
of well-produced videos, attractive graphics, polished magazines and
strategic online posts. It’s also strikingly savvy at spreading them
online, tailoring their presentation and message to media sites like
Twitter, YouTube and Vine. The messages are hypercustomized in language,
tone and content to reach as many people possible and ultimately go
viral. As Marshall Sella recently wrote in Matter,
IS is “an entire brand family, the equivalents of the Apple logo’s glow
... terrorism’s Coca-Cola.” There’s no need to hold an IS-stamped watch or baseball hat in your hands to face the truth: IS is a powerful and terrifying brand that we were not prepared to reckon with.
How exactly did we go from
the days of fuzzy, subtitled Osama bin Laden bootlegs to a Travel
Channel-esque hub for propaganda and recruitment? As sophisticated as IS
is at promoting its message on public platforms, it is deeply
protective of its digital tradecraft. Here’s what we know:
Building a digital empire
IS runs all its communications through the official propaganda headquarters it launched in the spring of 2014, the Al-Hayat Media Center.
This is where skilled, well-paid IS supporters work with high-tech
equipment and the latest editing and design tools to produce recruitment
films, propaganda materials like its glossy magazine Dabiq and its most famous product: gruesome torture videos.
Though
this is the terrorist group’s central communications hub, its influence
extends to about 20 other branches spread out along IS’ claimed
territory, according to estimates by Daniel Cohen, a research associate
at the Institute for National Security Studies.
Local offices are able to take cues from the main center, but they also
have room to create location-specific content to more effectively
communicate to the fighters in those areas. For example, supporters in
France have access to Dar al Islam, IS’ French-language propaganda magazine. Aref Ali Nayed, the Libyan ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, put it well when he told the New York Times
that “the Islamists have been very clever at rebranding. They have
learned the franchising model from McDonald’s. They give you the
methodology, standards and propaganda material.”
Sheer
volume dictates that these centers cannot approve every piece of
IS-related social media that floats through the digital ether. Rather
than try to monitor each message from the community, the media centers
offer jihadist soldiers guidelines on the types of messages they should
post.
“From
the beginning, [members of IS] started to send pictures from Twitter,”
Cohen told Yahoo News. “They did it for purposeful recruitment. Instead
of showing the fights, they’d show people sitting and eating pizza in
their lockers. Or they’d show people watching TV together, playing
PlayStation together. They are targeting a young audience and speaking
to them in the same language, showing that it’s a pleasant place.”
View gallery
.
Islamic State branding (via The Institute for National Security Studies)
It was perhaps the same genre of audience-based marketing that, in September, encouraged Western-based IS sympathizer
Anjem Choudary to tweet a short listicle titled “10 Facts from the
Islamic State that everyone should know.” (Number 7: “For every newly
married couples are given 700usd as a gift.”)
The
all-seeing Oz character who’s behind it has yet to be publicly
identified. Senior IS leader Abu Muhammad al-Adnani acts as Al-Hayat’s
main spokesperson and public face. However, he’s not widely believed to
also be the brains behind the operation.
“Usually
the people up on the frontlines aren’t the strategist,” Cohen said.
“Just like a McDonald’s ad campaign. Someone came up with the concept
and the script. But they’re never the same person who stars in the
commercial.”
McLaren has officially released the long awaited McLaren P1GTR
Call it the famed paint scheme, or
the monster rear wing. Or maybe it's the 986 hp on tap. Or the $3
million price tag. Whatever it is, the P1 GTR, dressed for its official
reveal in Geneva, looks utterly magnificent.
The downside of the P1GTR is that it is only meant for the racetrack.
The "base" P1 is one of the fastest hypercars on the planet. The P1 GTR
will be faster. A lot faster. The 3.8-liter turbocharged V-8 gets a 62
hp bump while the electric motor zaps an additional 21 hp. Further more,
110 lbs. of weight is shed by using "motorsports derived parts" like
polycarbonate side windows, as well as ditching superfluous items needed
for road homologation. The front track is 80mm wider, the ride height
is 50mm lower and the adjustable rear wing has been replaced by a fixed
one, albeit still capable of the DRS feature. This wing is set 100mm
higher than the road-going P1's most aggressive setting, helping ensure
total downforce levels increase by 10 percent, or 1,455 lbs. at 150 mph.
Let that number sink in for a second.
