Fitbug Orb fitness tracker priced at $50, can go up to six months between charges

FITBUG ORB OUTCLASSES EXISTING ACTIVITY TRACKERS ON VALUE, WEARABLILITY, PERSONALIZED CONTENT

At Less than Half the Price of Jawbone Up, Nike Fuel Band and Fitbit Flex Fitbug Orb Personally "Nudges" Users to Achieve Health Goals

Chicago, IL, October 16, 2013 – Activity trackers everywhere received a competitive kick with the launch of the Fitbug Orb, which at just $49.95 is the most affordable, feature and service-rich tracker on the market. Designed to expand the health tracking trend through more reasonable pricing, the Fitbug Orb is the latest innovation from Fitbug, a global leader in digital health and wellbeing solutions. Uniquely, it provides the device and advice people need to achieve their goals by combining technology that tracks movement and sleep patterns, with KiK, a proprietary digital coach that helps people set, monitor and where necessary, actually prompts them to act to achieve goals.

Unlike wrist-bound activity trackers, the discreet button-sized Fitbug Orb can be worn in different ways to suit individual styles or social settings. Whether placed on the belt, wrist, or lanyard, or clipped on or beneath clothing, the small sophisticated device tracks a wealth of information including, steps, aerobic steps/time, distance, calories burned, speed and even sleep - normally only featured on products with much higher price points. The Bluetooth Smart Orb then syncs this information to mobile devices[i] and the KiK digital coach platform.

A tracking device is just the first step to achieving your goals. KiK provides that added layer of motivation allowing Fitbug to set, track and manage personalized weekly nutrition and activity based targets. More than just a passive activity tracker, KiK leverages eight years of Fitbug global data and sophisticated algorithms designed by nutritionists and sports scientists to calculate realistic weekly targets for users to hit. When KiK sees a user is performing well it sends regular feedback, advice and encouragement via emails and smartphone alerts. If KiK senses a user is in danger of missing a goal, it will send a friendly "nudge" to get them back on track and is proved to increase results.[ii]

"Wearable tracking technology is one of the biggest health trends of the year. However high prices and lack of personal motivation to maintain fitness regimens means the full potential is yet to be realized" said Paul Landau, Founder and CEO of Fitbug. "As one of the first companies in this category, we have designed the Fitbug Orb and KiK platform to provide both the device and advice people need to get fitter, lighter and lead happier, healthier lives."

No other leading activity trackers can boast as wide a range of features, wearability and value as the Fitbug Orb. At just $49.95, it is less than half the price of other devices. Proving great things come in small packages its features include:

· Tracking of steps, aerobic steps/time, distance, calories burned, speed and sleep
· Free Fitbug app (iOS and Samsung Galaxy S4 Android smartphones)
· Dongle option available for users without a compatible Smartphone or tablet
· KiK, a personalized digital coaching technology that calculates goals on personalized pages and nudges users with feedback, advice and encouragement via emails and smart phone alerts
· Multiple wear options, such as a wristband, belt hook and underwear clip
· Multiple sync options, including Push, Beacon and Stream
· Three eye-catching color options, including white, pink and black
· No need for re-charging with batteries lasting for up to six months
· Connectivity to other leading apps including MyFitnessPal and Aetna Carepass

In addition, the Fitbug Orb comes with membership to the Fitbug health community which gives further access to food logging and progress tracking, plus a host of healthy recipes, wellbeing content, online games, advice from resident experts as well as the hottest wellness topics in the weekly Bugzine newsletter.

The Fitbug Orb is the latest addition to the Fitbug family of Bluetooth 4.0-enabled devices, which includes the Fitbug Go ($49.95), Fitbug Air ($49.95) and Fitbug Wow scales ($79.99), which may also be synced with KiK. The Fitbug Orb is priced at $49.95 representing the best value in the market when compared to other costly solutions and is available nationwide at www.fitbug.com, Amazon and other retailers.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/16/fitbug-orb-price?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000589
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What, Exactly, Is James Franco Doing?

James Franco has big plans, always.

Andrew Medichini/AP

James Franco has big plans, always.

Andrew Medichini/AP

What is James Franco doing?

People started asking this question, in earnest, somewhere around the time he went on General Hospital in 2009. Up until then, he'd been a young actor whose path was relatively normal: he was on Freaks & Geeks, and in Never Been Kissed, and he played James Dean on cable. He was in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, and then into Apatow country. Occasional forays into super-artsy stuff like films that showed in museums? No big deal. Nothing you wouldn't see from, say, Ethan Hawke or somebody like that. Swerves between, say, Pineapple Express and Milk, but that happens. Mork wound up in Good Morning, Vietnam, after all.

But then: General Hospital.

Appearances in mainstream stoner comedies are one thing, when it comes to changing up the highness of your brow and toying with the expectations people have of what you would and wouldn't do. But ... a soap? A real, straight-up soap? The same one Luke and Laura were on? Even knowing that he called the appearance a form of performance art, it continued to raise the question...

What is James Franco doing?

Right now, he's releasing his first alleged novel, Actors Anonymous, but we'll get back to that.

It's not like he needs another line of work. He has a band. He writes short stories. He hosted the Oscars. He was roasted on Comedy Central. He's taken many, many classes — and taught some, too. He makes offbeat art and appears in other people's offbeat art. He's played a hot guy on single-woman network sitcoms (both Tina Fey's and Mindy Kaling's).

At the time of a 2010 profile in New York Magazine, the question Franco predicted would be asked about him — and the writer told him was already being asked — was whether he was spreading himself too thin. But in fact, by doing so much, Franco may have achieved something that's almost impossible: he has no meaningful image other than as himself. There is nothing James Franco could do at this point that would move the needle.

What could he do that would seem out of place? What could he do that you really wouldn't expect? He wouldn't really surprise people if he won an Academy Award. He wouldn't really surprise people if he decided to take a one-day role in a Virgin Airlines video demonstrating seatbelts. He could show up in oil paintings, on a sitcom, as a Jeopardy! contestant, as the announced star of So Fast & Extra Furious 8, or in hard-core pornography, and nobody would really think it was anything other than a further example of Well, That's James Franco For You.

"I might be surprised if somebody else did that, but I can sort of believe it, coming from James Franco," is what a lot of us would say about literally anything he did with his career. Aside from something nefarious, even in his personal life, what could he really do now that would require a comeback, or a rehabilitation tour, or a second chance, or an audit of how audiences feel about him?

At times, he's seemed like the kind of guy who's obsessed with pretending he only touches the avant-garde — a self-styled intellectual who disdains everything that's not from art museums. But he's also perfectly happy to do Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes and Oz The Great And Powerful, two huge moneymaking films that have little connection to short films that wind up in museums. This year, he did This Is The End, a proudly stupid gross-out apocalypse comedy in which he and his friends play themselves.

Blockbusters, both self-consciously respectable and not so much? Fine. Obscurity? Fine. School? Fine. Art? Fine. Poetry? Fine.

And now he's published that "novel," Actors Anonymous. It's not really a novel; it's really a collection of ... stuff. Loosely — like, "XXXL shirt on XXXS body" loosely — based on the 12 steps of addiction treatment programs, it consists of short stories, snippets of scripts, and what it's hard not to envision as Things James Franco Wrote Down On The Back Of A Receipt One Time About Acting And Being Famous.

Among these snippets, there are flashes of insight — like, "I performed for money, and I performed for free. It's better to perform for money if you hate the director; it's better to perform for free if you love him." But there are also things nobody would pay money to read under normal circumstances — like, "There are some people that are very serious about their acting. But the ones that are too serious are boring and usually end up strangling their own performances." That would probably not make the cut if he said it in an interview; it's not really book material.

The fiction sections are stories about actors, but other themes tie them together: mostly, they are about young men driven nearly mad by some combination of generalized rage and a specific desire to have sex with, and sometimes to dominate and possess, women. They're far too inconsistent to be really satisfying, but they simmer with a sometimes intriguing frustration. Franco loves to intersperse signs that certain stories are autobiographical and that he's appearing in the book as "James Franco" or "The Actor," but there are also tweaked details that are meant to hold the reader at a slight distance and retain some sense of disorientation with regard to truth and fiction.

In other words, it's the James-Franco-iest book he could have written, because there's nothing to wrap yourself around. It's not very good, but it's not unambitious, and it's not lazy. It's about him but it's not, it's revealing but it's not, and in the end, it's interesting but it's not.

It's impossible for a celebrity to have an image that's a true blank canvas; we are far too voracious for that. But Franco has perhaps achieved the next best thing: a canvas onto which he's spilled so much paint in so many patterns that it ceases to look like anything, and anything you could add to it would look like it belonged there. And, of course, if you stare at it long enough, you can see patterns emerge and then recede — a poseur, a poet, something jarringly authentic, something painfully manufactured. Even, if you squint, the Last Honest Man In Hollywood, who puts out a book that demonstrates that like a lot of us, he has a certain number of sharp thoughts and an awful lot of mundane ones.

Lots of actors go high-low — the Steven Soderbergh "one for them, one for me" thing. But this is different; Franco has achieved a lack of definition that's unthinkable for a guy like George Clooney, no matter what combination of art-house movies and blockbusters he might make.

There was a lot of talk after Franco's Comedy Central roast about the number of jokes that focused on the idea that he's gay. If nothing else, you'd expect the people who were there to roast him, like Seth Rogen and Nick Kroll and Andy Samberg, to expect a little more from themselves than gay-panic har-har-ing like it's 1998. Even if they didn't worry that those jokes — 26, by BuzzFeed's count — would be offensive, you'd expect them to worry that after 26, they'd seem tired, as Aziz Ansari eventually pointed out that they were.

But maybe people who would normally know better remained stalled at lame gay jokes because roasts are usually focused on making fun of an image of the roastee that the audience will recognize, and Franco offers up less material in that regard than you might think. Hard to make pseudo-intellectual jokes at the expense of a guy who cheerfully made Your Highness. Hard to make dumb-stoner jokes at the expense of a guy who spends so much time pursuing advanced degrees.

It's really hard to know how much of this is on purpose. If it is — if this splatter-painting on his own image to achieve a certain imageless state is something he planned — it's nearly genius, but rather cynical. If it's accidental, it's almost sweet.

But the result is the same either way. He has a strange kind of freedom that comes from a very successful campaign of obfuscation, not so much about his personal life as about his sensibility. So he floats around, and he does what he wants, and none of it changes anything.

Franco has 13 projects listed on his IMDB page that are (or are rumored to be) somewhere between concept and execution — and those are just acting. There's also directing, writing, cinematography, and an unbilled job as the provider of morning pastries for the cast of NCIS.

That last one is a lie, but for a minute, you believed it.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/10/15/234075232/what-exactly-is-james-franco-doing?ft=1&f=
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Farewell, and thank you

It's been a pleasure. An absolute pleasure. Over seven years ago, I gave up nights, weekends, and nearly every waking hour I could find in order to write about technology for anyone who would read it. Engadget was but two years young, but I had every intention of helping it to last well beyond the ...

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MIT's "Kinect of the Future" Can Track You Through Walls

The ability to passively track people within a given space is every retailer's dream (and every conspiracy theorist's nightmare). Those dreams recently took a step closer to reality with the debut of a new people-tracking system from MIT.

Read more...

Source: http://gizmodo.com/mits-kinect-of-the-future-can-track-you-through-wall-1443947631
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BitLock offers a bring-your-own-bicycle approach to bike sharing

Unless you're an enraged motorist, there's plenty of good to be found in the current push for big city bike sharing programs. BitLock is certainly in keeping with the spirit of such initiatives, albeit on a much more localized scale. The proposed product is essentially a standard bike U-lock that ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/ZgGYgbAa6i0/
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A Free App Can Save Your iPhone 5C From Looking Hideous In Its Case

If you snatched up the colorful iPhone 5C and its perforated case before you realized what an eyesore it is, there's now a cheap and simple solution to the problem. The developers at LunarLincoln have just released a free app called CaseCollage that lets you create and print an insert that fills all those cheese grater holes with whatever images or graphics you want.

S

The wonderfully simple app lets you import images from Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, and Picasa and arrange them in any design you like. You can also choose from a collection of graphic design elements, typography, or even just simple colors to pretty much create any design you like. When you're happy all you need to is print out your design, trim it down, insert it between your iPhone 5C and voila, your phone is no longer an embarrassment. [CaseCollage via Pocket-lint via SlashGear]

Source: http://gizmodo.com/a-free-app-can-save-your-iphone-5c-from-looking-hideous-1443840925
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Rights groups urge Justice probe of 1985 bombing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Civil rights groups and members of Congress are pressing the Justice Department to renew its investigation of a 1985 office bombing that killed Palestinian-American civil rights leader Alex Odeh and injured seven people.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Jewish Voice for Peace and others have launched a petition campaign asking Justice to further investigate the explosion, which demolished the committee's office in Santa Ana, Calif. The online petition has about 10,000 signatures.

California Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez sent a letter to the department in June and is seeking other lawmakers to sign a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder. The FBI identified suspects after the attack, but none were ever named or indicted.

"Whenever a leader for a civil rights organization is killed, it is the responsibility of our country as a whole— and a civil rights community as a whole— to stand up and demand that their killers be brought to justice and to insure that the U.S. Department of Justice does everything in its power to close the case," NAACP President Ben Jealous told reporters in a conference call Monday.

The DOJ, which has furloughed workers due to the government shutdown, did not respond immediately to a request for comment on Monday, which also was the federal Columbus Day holiday. In 2010, the FBI described Odeh's killing in an agency news blog as "an active, ongoing priority investigation" and noted a $1 million reward.

Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said Monday that he wants the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations to convene a hearing on the bombing.

"We're going to pursue it vigorously and we're not going to let any more time lapse," Conyers said. "We're going to continue to help all of the organizations that are involved build up more and more support for us getting to where we ought to be in terms of a horrific, violent crime that has, I think, been put on the back burner for far too long."

At the time of the attack, the FBI said they believed the bombing was the responsibility of the militant Jewish Defense League. An attorney for the group denied the allegations and asked for a retraction from the agency. The FBI also linked Odeh's killing to two other acts of domestic terrorism in Brentwood, N.Y. and Paterson, N.J. that same year.

Odeh, the West Coast regional director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, was killed as he opened the door to his office on Oct. 11, 1985. The bombing occurred the morning after Odeh said on a Los Angeles television news broadcast that Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat was a "man of peace" because of his role in securing the release of passengers from the hijacked Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in Egypt.

Odeh, who came to the U.S. from Palestine, was described by both Jews and Arabs as a nonviolent man who advocated compromise. According to the American-Arab committee, Odeh immigrated to the United States in 1972 and became a U.S. citizen in 1977. He was a poet and lecturer.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rights-groups-urge-justice-probe-1985-bombing-205608305.html
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Battle of the Horde

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Battle of the Horde is based on a fantasy world with many creatures from the fantasy worlds, The Daemons invaded the world, from the underground. Attacking Humans to their final death, and their king will fall down, if there is only heroes in this realm.

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This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, “Battle of the Horde”. Anything posted here will also show up there.

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Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.

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New 'deadline' for fixing Obamacare glitches seen in mid-November

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. administration has a little over a month to fix the technology problems crippling its online health insurance marketplace, or jeopardize the goal of signing up millions of Americans in time for benefits under President Barack Obama's healthcare law, experts said on Thursday.

Problems with the federal marketplace's entry portal serving 36 states, the website Healthcare.gov, continued for a 10th day on Thursday despite signs of gradual improvement, keeping a brake on the ability of consumers to shop for federally subsidized health coverage.

Poor turnout in enrollment would provide further ammunition for Republican foes of Obamacare, whose efforts to kill the law have culminated in a federal government shutdown that began on October 1, coinciding with the launch of the health insurance exchanges nationwide.

Already on Thursday, Republican lawmakers in Congress launched a new investigation into the technical glitches, sending letters to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and two of the website's contractors, asking for details on what is causing the failures and any system changes or testing that had been performed.

Up to 7 million Americans are expected to enroll in health plans for 2014 under the law, formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Insurance executives, policy experts and former administration officials said the federal government's technical problems need to be largely sorted out by mid-November.

That would help ensure that large numbers of enrollees - especially healthy young adults needed to make the program work financially - can be processed by a December 15 deadline for January 1 coverage.

"Mid-November would be a time where folks who are getting online or accessing in other ways should really see things move pretty efficiently," Dan Hilferty, chief executive of Philadelphia-based Independence Blue Cross, said in an interview. "As we get closer to January 1, if in fact some of these glitches are not fixed, then I think people will become more and more concerned, and maybe panic about it."

"We have a strong team in place, including external contractors, who are working around the clock to improve Healthcare.gov. We have a plan in place and are making progress, but we will not stop until the doors to Healthcare.gov are wide open," HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in a statement on Thursday.

HEALTHCARE.GOV

Healthcare.gov is the entry site for consumers in states that have chosen not to build their own healthcare exchanges. The website was hobbled within minutes of its launch on October 1. HHS attributed the crash to an unexpected surge of millions of interested consumers seeking information on the new benefits, and said it was working to address capacity and software problems to quickly fix the problem.

"There have been a lot of server issues, so I haven't been able to get through," said Ira Barth, 24, a part-time classical music singer in Dover, New Jersey, whose exchange relies on the government site. "Right now for me it's actually cheaper to visit the doctor without having insurance. I want to see how affordable it is right now."

Sebelius told a gathering in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Thursday that 13 million people have tried to visit Healthcare.gov so far this month in what she called "a sign of great need."

Joe Bourgart, 55, of Murrysville, Pennsylvania, attended the event that was co-hosted by the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, where he was able to register on Healthcare.gov for the first time.

"You have to do something about this," Bourgart said to Sebelius as she walked by, referring to the website problems. "I promise I will," she responded.

Bourgart, who identified himself as a Republican and a supporter of universal healthcare for Americans, said "whether this is the right way to do it, I can't say. But I do think you have to try things before you can say if they work or not."

"I feel like unfortunately the whole government shutdown issue has put this issue to the sidelines while everyone is focused on the mess in Washington," he added. "I am very disappointed in my party at the moment."

INVESTIGATING THE GLITCHES

The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, in its letters to Sebelius and contractors CGI and Quality Software Services Inc, questioned the nature of the glitches against testimony from federal officials and company representatives ahead of Healthcare.gov's launch on October 1.

"Despite the widespread belief that the administration was not ready for the health law's October 1 launch, top officials and lead IT contractors looked us in the eye and assured us all systems were a go," said committee chairman Fred Upton, a Republican from Michigan. "The American people deserve to know what caused this mess."

CGI said it would cooperate with the committee's request. Officials at QSSI were not immediately available for comment.

Patience has also begun to run thin among Democrats who worry that the administration is not acting decisively enough.

"They don't seem to be addressing these problems quickly enough. They've had three years to get their ducks in a row. It gets to the point where it becomes inexcusable. And we're not at that point yet. But we're getting close to it," said a senior Democratic aide in Congress.

"With the amount of support the president and the White House have from Silicon Valley, you would think they'd be able to nip these problems in the bud. They could call up any of these people and ask for their assistance. Why not put together a blue ribbon panel with all the guys from Google and Twitter? This should have been done beforehand."

Democratic Senator Edward Markey said Obamacare came up very briefly at a White House meeting between the president and Democratic Senators on Thursday.

"They need a geek squad, not a firing squad," Markey told reporters about the administration's IT challenges.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reporting by Elizabeth Daley in Pittsburgh, Lewis Krauskopf and Sharon Begley in New York and Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Eric Walsh and Lisa Shumaker)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/deadline-fixing-obamacare-glitches-seen-mid-november-030638075.html
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Melissa Aldana Crash Trio: Live At Berklee

Melissa Aldana Crash Trio In Concert

Kelly Davidson/Courtesy of Berklee College Of Music

Melissa Aldana performs with her Crash Trio, including bassist Pablo Menares.

October 9, 2013The saxophonist, 24, came to the U.S. from Chile with little money and less command of English. But she did have some serious ability at the saxophone, which has now found footing in the New York scene. She visits her alma mater to perform with her international band.

Source: http://www.npr.org/event/music/229325774/melissa-aldana-crash-trio-live-at-berklee?ft=1&f=1109
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Out in Topeka: Stories from gays, lesbians in the capital | CJOnline ...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]She is also a lesbian.?I'm open and out,? Billings said.She is one of several Topekans who shared their stories with The Topeka Capital-Journal in the wake of the Topeka City Council's recent decision to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of classes covered by the Topeka Human Relations Commission.They talked about what it was like to be ... Billings has been in a relationship with her current partner for two years. While Billings realizes people ...

Source: http://cjonline.com/news/2013-09-21/out-topeka-stories-gays-lesbians-capital

Misty May And Kerri Walsh Jake Dalton London 2012 field hockey

BlackBerry slashes jobs in face of $1B 2Q loss

FILE- In this Tuesday, July 9, 2013, file photo, pedestrians walk near BlackBerry's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, on the morning of the company's Annual General Meeting. BlackBerry said Friday, Sept. 20, 2013, it will lay off 4,500 employees, or 40 percent of its global workforce, and is announcing a nearly $1 billion second-quarter loss in a surprise early release of earnings. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Geoff Robins, File)

FILE- In this Tuesday, July 9, 2013, file photo, pedestrians walk near BlackBerry's headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario, on the morning of the company's Annual General Meeting. BlackBerry said Friday, Sept. 20, 2013, it will lay off 4,500 employees, or 40 percent of its global workforce, and is announcing a nearly $1 billion second-quarter loss in a surprise early release of earnings. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Geoff Robins, File)

TORONTO (AP) ? It was once so addictive it inspired the nickname "CrackBerry." President Barack Obama confessed to being among the millions of devotees who couldn't bear to stop tapping feverishly away on its tiny keyboard. Madonna once said she slept with hers under her pillow.

Then came the iPhone.

Users newly addicted to Facebook and photo-sharing and Angry Birds started flirting with the opposition. And as more smartphones flooded the market with their supersize Samsung screens and thousands of apps, the BlackBerry failed to keep up with the flash.

This year's launch of BlackBerry 10, its revamped operating system, and fancier new devices ? the touchscreen Z10 and Q10 for keyboard loyalists ? was supposed to rejuvenate the brand and lure customers. But the much-delayed phones have failed to turn the company around. At their peak in the fall of 2009, BlackBerry's smartphones enjoyed global market share of over 20 percent, says Mike Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity. Their piece of the pie has since evaporated to just 1.5 percent.

Now the company says it will lay off 4,500 employees, or 40 percent of its global workforce, as it tries to slash costs by 50 percent and shift its focus back to competing mainly for the business customers most loyal to its brand. A week earlier than expected, BlackBerry surprised the market by reporting Friday that it lost nearly $1 billion in the second quarter. It's booking over $900 million in charges to write down the value of its glut of unsold smartphones.

Shares were halted pending the news. They plunged as low as $8.01 when the stock reopened for trading, before closing down 17 percent at $8.72.

"This is the end of the BlackBerry as we know it," BGC analyst Colin Gillis said from New York. "This is a major pivot. They are cutting half of their employees and they're going to focus on becoming a niche player focused on the enterprise."

Gillis said he doesn't expect to see a BlackBerry advertisement on television again.

He said it might be more interesting for a prospective buyer, though, now that that it has announced the restructuring. Gillis thinks it's possible that BlackBerry could survive as a much smaller player. At the end of the second quarter, the company had total cash and investments of about $2.6 billion and no debt.

"That's probably the feedback they've been getting. They don't do all this if you have a buyer lined up," Gillis said. "Some of the actions may have been driven by feedback by potential buyers down the road. Nobody wants to come in and buy the company and hold an all hands meeting and say, 'By the way, half of you are fired.'"

Gillis said he can't understand why BlackBerry would release the earnings late Friday, a week early. "That's abysmal," he said. "Did you really need to do it 3:15 p.m. on a Friday? Couldn't you have just waited a week or done it Monday morning?"

BlackBerry had been scheduled to release earnings next week. But the Waterloo, Ontario company surprised the market late Friday afternoon by announcing that it expects to post a staggering loss of $950 million to $995 million for the quarter, including a massive $930 million to $960 million write-down of the value of its inventory. Revenue of $1.6 billion is only about half of the $3 billion that analysts expected, according to FactSet. The company's expected adjusted loss of 47 cents to 51 cents per share falls far below the loss of 16 cents per share projected by Wall Street.

BlackBerry said it wants to slash operating costs in half by the first quarter of 2015 so cutting its global headcount to 7,000 total employees is necessary. The company let 5,000 people go last year.

"We are implementing the difficult, but necessary operational changes announced today to address our position in a maturing and more competitive industry, and to drive the company toward profitability," Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of BlackBerry, said in a statement.

BlackBerry said last month that it would consider selling itself. The company reiterated Friday that a special committee of its board of directors continues to evaluate all options. The company said it plans to focus on offering only two high-end devices and two entry-level handsets going forward, with emphasis on the business market.

"Going forward, we plan to refocus our offering on our end-to-end solution of hardware, software and services for enterprises and the productive, professional end user," said Heins. "This puts us squarely on target with the customers that helped build BlackBerry into the leading brand today for enterprise security, manageability and reliability."

BlackBerry, formerly known as RIM, was once Canada's most valuable company with a market value of $83 billion in June 2008, but the stock has plummeted from over $140 share to less than $9. Its decline is evoking memories of Nortel, another Canadian tech giant, which ended up declaring bankruptcy in 2009.

Of BlackBerry's remaining employees, thousands live in Waterloo, a university town 90 minutes' drive from Toronto, where everyone seems to know someone who works for the company. Residents have said they've been talking about the company in hushed tones for the past few years.

"Our thoughts are with those who have lost their jobs at BlackBerry, it is always a cause for concern for our Government," Canadian Industry Minister James Moore said in a statement.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-09-20-CN-TEC-BlackBerry-Layoffs/id-8e60bb7736e644f58b1c13c32525eae3

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'Ambitious' plan for High Peak Moors

19 September 2013 Last updated at 21:13 ET By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News

A 50-year conservation project, described as the "biggest and most ambitious" of its kind, aims to restore a historic part of the Peak District.

The National Trust has launched its vision to undo decades of damage on High Peak Moors and return the landscape to its former glory.

Measures include drainage removal and vegetation and woodland restoration.

The area includes Kinder Scout, the site of the 1932 mass trespass that led to the formation of National Parks.

The Trust's rural enterprises director, Patrick Begg, said restoring the vital habitat could only be tackled over the long term.

"There really is not much point committing to restore upland peat bogs over a five-year period as this just scratches the surface," he explained.

"In order to get them back into good health, we really need to be committing to [50 years]. The work we will do will take that long to bed in and for the habitat to start to turn round."

Mr Begg told BBC News that the project will focus on a number of areas.

"We will be really investing in rewetting the bogs on the tops," he said.

"That involves blocking up drainage gullies and reseeding and replanting the bogs with cotton grass, as well as laying cut heather on them.

"My nutshell phrase at the moment is turning what looks like a moonscape at the moment, because it is so eroded, back into a moor-scape. It will look very different when we are done.

"Through that vegetation work, it will also be a better home for a wide range of species, so there will be better biodiversity."

Woodland revival

Another aspect of the vision will be to develop more woodlands in the area's cloughs, which are the steep valleys that lead up to the moors, to replace the loss of tree cover in recent decades.

"If you went back in time 50 years or more, you would have seen a rich tapestry of woodlands on those valleys," Mr Begg observed.

"We want to put those back and they will help in providing homes for wildlife as well as stabilising the soil and vegetation so we don't get the kind of run-off that we see at the moment."

The Trust says its vision will be beneficial in a number of other ways, namely helping to protect water supplies into the future and storing carbon dioxide that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere.

The authors of the 50-year plan say water from the moors feed two reservoirs in the area and the Trust-owned part of the moors stores carbon that is equivalent to three years' worth of emissions from a city the size of Sheffield.

Mr Begg added: "These are fundamental things that society needs us to be doing, alongside providing a better future for nature. It is also about being able to connect people back to nature."

The area contains the site of a protest that has been acknowledged as being pivotal in opening up public access to many of the nation's natural landscapes.

In April 1932, hundreds of ramblers walked on to private land on Kinder Scout, Derbyshire, to assert their right to walk freely across the countryside, which they called their "right to roam".

A number of the walkers were arrested and imprisoned but the act highlighted the growing demand among people to be granted access to natural areas for leisure and recreation.

Mr Begg observed: "We are very aware of that cultural depth and we want to continue to inspire people through the direct contact with nature."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24162587#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Unlocking the Bootloader on the Sony Xperia Z1 breaks the camera app There have...

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Source: http://www.facebook.com/zomgitscj/posts/10151931803568223

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5 simple ways to increase security and privacy on iOS 7

5 easy ways to lock down the information on iOS 7 and enhance your security and privacy!

With iOS 7 - see our complete iOS 7 review - Apple has made the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad more convenient than ever, but also more secure. How is that possible? Well, in most cases you - the owner of the device - have to choose which one is more important to you - the owner of the device. You can set things up so that every major setting and notification is available at the glance of an eye, the swipe of a finger, or the sound of a voice. Or you can make it so that every bit on the box is locked away behind a strong password. There's no "security flaw" that can be taken advantage of, only tools that you can choose to use, or not, to provide the right balance on your device. Now, adding security does require more time and effort than going without, but nowhere nearly as much time and effort as it takes to recover after your stuff is spied, stolen, or otherwise violated. So, weigh the options and make your choice in the eternal battle between security and convenience. Here's what you need know!

1. How to use a strong(er) Passcode lock

If you have an iPhone 5s you have Touch ID which lets you, if you choose to use it, secure your device with a biometric fingerprint identity sensor. If you have any other Apple device, you have the option of a Passcode lock, and you should absolutely use it. Not only does it protect your iPhone from casual snooping - or from people tweeting "poopin" the minute you leave it unattended - it prevents thieves from getting your data, and enables hardware encryption to make sure all your stuff is safe. While the basic 4-number pin offers that base-level of protection, there just aren't enough 4 number variations to keep your stuff really safe. For that you need a stronger Passcode. If an alphanumeric password is too annoying for you to enter on mobile, you can turn it on anyway, enter a longer (than 4) set of numbers, and get some of the benefits without making it overly arduous to enter.

• How to set an alphanumeric Passcode on iOS
• How to choose a better master password [AgileBits blog]

2. How to keep personal notifications and system toggles off your Lock screen

What good is a super-strong Passcode lock if anyone and everyone can see your messages, Notification Center alerts, access Passbook, or use Siri or Control Center right from your Lock screen. Sure, it's incredibly convenient to be able to glance at incoming messages and quickly add things to Reminders or Notes, but for those times when you don't think you can safely leave your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad lying around without people snooping, remember you can turn all that Lock screen stuff off.

• How to disable Control Center access on the iOS 7 Lock screen
• How to disable access to Siri and Passbook on the Lock screen
• How to disable Notification Center alerts on the Lock screen

3. Turn on 2-step verification

Security works best in layers, and defensive depth means having as many layers are possible. Touch ID now provides biometrics on the iPhone 5s so "something you are", while the password is "something you know", a token is "something you have". It's not full-on multi-factor authentication, at least not yet (because it's still either or, not all), but it is 2-step verification and, when it comes to security, 2 steps really are better than one. You will have to enter an app-specific password, or an additional pincode/password the first time you set up the service on your device, but it'll make it more than twice as strong for only a minimal amount of extra effort. Do it.

• How to set up 2-step verification for Apple ID
• How to set up 2-step verification for Google accounts
• How to set up 2-step verification for Dropbox
• How to set up 2-step verification for Twitter

4. How to keep your web browsing, location, social and other data private

Let's say you're not looking at porn - we don't judge! - but you still want to make sure cookies, web history, and other information about your browsing doesn't get recorded and tracked across the internet. Safari pioneered private browsing, so that's easy to do. In fact, on iOS 7 Private Browsing can be enabled from the bookmark, tabs, and smart search field screens, so it's even easier and more convenient than ever.

But what about things like location data, contacts, and other sensitive information? What if you, intentionally or simply inattentively, gave access to all off that, and more, to other apps? No worries. Again, iOS makes it easy to review and change your privacy settings. So do many online services as well. Lastly, if you're on a network you don't trust, and have access to a VPN service, that can help keep your data private as well.

• How to keep your web browsing private with Safari
• How to revoke app access to your location
• How to revoke app access to your contacts
• How to adjust privacy settings on Facebook
• How to connect to a VPN

5. How to wipe web history and other data from your device

If you didn't initially use Safari's private browsing, or you want to clear other personal, private, potentially embarrassing, compromising, or just plain awkward data on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, including messages, mail, photos, and more, you can. You even have the nuclear option of securely wiping your entire device, and killing old backups, so you can start over fresh, clean, and safe.

• How to clear website data on iOS
• How to clear messages, mail, photos, and more on iOS
• How to wipe all data on iOS
• How to delete an iCloud backup on iOS

6. Bonus tip: Use a password manager

Security is at constant war with convenience. Fortunately, in order to tip the scales slightly more towards convenience, there are password managers. Due to the lack of browser plugins on iOS, iPhone and iPad password managers aren't as well integrated as they are on Mac or Windows, but there are still many on the App Store to choose from.

• Best password manager apps for iPhone and iPad: 1Password, oneSafe, LastPass, and more!
• How we handle security at iMore: Our apps and approaches to keeping our data safe!

Post iOS 7

Every thing is a trade-off, and every choice comes with repercussions. Even if you disable Siri and Control Center on the Lock screen, a thief could still turn off the device and kill your ability to track it. Even if Apple were to force authorization (Passcode or Touch ID) to enable powering off, a thief could put the device in DFU mode. If Apple were to remove DFU mode, the legitimate trouble shooting and fixes wouldn't be possible.

Instead, we have Activation Lock, which requires an Apple ID to circumvent. The idea isn't to make a device so secure even the owner can't get into it, but to make it as unattractive as possible to pranksters, thieves, and other miscreants so they go elsewhere.

Unless you work in Enterprise or Government and have an enforced policy on your device, you probably want some balance between security and convenience.

Your top security tips?

Those are our top 5 tips for taking your iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad security to the next level! If you've got any other tips, or alternate ways to keep stuff safe on iOS 7, let us know!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/mpgSNkRY6QI/story01.htm

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JPMorgan's London Whale fine is excessive and political

Hasn't this man paid enough?

FORTUNE -- JPMorgan Chase is shelling out $800 million for punching itself in the face.

That's how much JPMorgan?is reportedly?going to pay, give or take $100 million, to the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators to settle charges that it did something wrong in connection with last year's multi-billion trading blunder that is commonly associated with a particular large sea mammal. The actual settlement has not been disclosed. Both the SEC and JPMorgan declined to comment.

It seems like a lot of money, in part because it is, but especially when you consider what JPMorgan (JPM)?actually did.

MORE: Sorry Wall Street, Janet Yellen is no dove

It certainly was something to stop and gawk at. The London Whale's $6 billion loss was big and was also made by the one of the two banks?we all thought was too smart for these types of mistakes (the other being Goldman Sachs (GS)). But let's put this in perspective: No clients were ripped off by the London Whale's $6 billion loss, or lost money. No clients were even involved. The bank lost $6 billion of its own money, or maybe money that was given to it by depositors. But depositors didn't lose any money either. Neither did the government. JPMorgan was never in danger of needing to be bailed out. The bank has $200 billion in capital to use to cover losses such as these, and it did.

The only party that lost out was JPMorgan, and maybe its shareholders. But even the shareholder-as-victim scenario is debatable. JPMorgan's stock is up 35% since it revealed the losses. I guess you can argue the stock would be even higher without the losses. But the bank is trading at slightly over book value at a time when few other big banks are, and when people are still a little skeptical about the big banks books.

JPMorgan, too, is required to keep track of its traders and its money. It's also not supposed to lie to shareholders. And JPMorgan was forced to restate some of its earnings, so shareholders may have felt misled. But the Justice Department and the SEC in their cases against the traders make it clear that the government believes JPMorgan's executives were also lied to.

So yeah, JPMorgan did something wrong, but what's that worth?

MORE: Not so fabulous: SEC now 1-for-4 in financial crisis cases

I don't know the answer, and neither does anyone else. What we have are comparisons. European regulators fined UBS (UBS) $50 million for failing to supervise Kweku Adoboli, the rogue trader that cost that bank $2.3 billion. This is simple math, but $800 million is a lot more than three times $50 million. French regulators don't appear to have fined Societe Generale (SCGLF) anything for the $4.9 billion loss it had from rogue trader Jerome Kerviel.

Three years ago, the SEC charged Goldman $550 million, which at the time was the largest fine the SEC had ever imposed, for its role in selling the designed-to-fail subprime mortgage bond Abacus. But Goldman's clients were defrauded out of money in that instance. The Libor fines have been even bigger. But that was a case of manipulation of a widely traded and important interest rate. In JPMorgan's case, the SEC isn't alleging manipulation, and no one had ever heard of the IG9 before the London Whale.

Perhaps a better comparison would be to an accounting fraud, since that's basically what the SEC is alleging, that JPMorgan didn't keep its books accurately. But even in Enron, the massive accounting fraud of the early 2000s, the SEC only leveled about $350 million in fines, and much of that was paid by banks that helped Enron, not the firm itself.

"$800 million is clearly significant in a case that doesn't look like the financial crime of the century," says Columbia University law professor John Coffee. "It's more like the blunder of the decade."

MORE: Advice for JPMorgan: Split into three companies

Clearly, the SEC is trying to show that it is being tougher than it used to be. Indeed, on Tuesday the SEC fined 22 hedge funds for a trading strategy that didn't cost anyone anything. It might have actually benefited the market.

The agency is in a period of adjustment on how it administers punishment. And it's reacting to criticism in the past that its fines were too small to make banks change their behavior. And that banks were allowed to get away without admitting or denying that they did anything wrong. (JPMorgan is said to be admitting some wrongdoing here, but probably to a relatively minor offense.)

The opposite of that: Make the fines the big banks pay be really big no matter what the crime. The problem is these big fines start to look like payoffs, especially as in the case of JPMorgan, where no top executives were accused of any wrongdoing. And the payoffs are so large that only the big banks can afford them. Is that a better way for justice to be served?

Source: http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/09/18/jpmorgan-london-whale-fine/?section=money_termsheet

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JPMorgan near deal on Whale probes for about $700 mln - source

REUTERS - JPMorgan Chase & Co is near a final settlement of probes into its London Whale derivatives loss and expects to pay about $700 million, according to source familiar with the matter.

Completion of the deal depends on coordinating agreements with multiple government agencies, the source said.

The source spoke after Bloomberg News and the Wall Street Journal reported that JPMorgan has agreed with regulators on how much it will pay.

The bank lost $6.2 billion last year on the trades made from its offices in London. (Reporting by David Henry in New York; Editing by Carol Bishopric)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/jpmorgan-near-deal-whale-probes-700-mln-source-203101151--sector.html

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How Many People Have Been Killed by Guns Since Newtown?

The answer to the simple question in that headline is surprisingly hard to come by. So Slate is collecting data for our crowdsourced interactive. This data is necessarily incomplete (click here to see why, and to learn more about @GunDeaths, the Twitter user who helped us create this interactive). But the more people who are paying attention, the better the data will be. You can help us draw a more complete picture of gun violence in America. If you know about a gun death in your community that isn?t represented here, please email a link to a news report to slatedata@gmail.com. And if you?d like to use this data yourself for your own projects, it?s open. You can download it here.

Update, June 19, 2013: As time goes on, our count gets further and further away from the likely actual number of gun deaths in America?because roughly 60 percent of deaths by gun are due to suicides, which are very rarely reported. When discussing this issue, please note that our number is by design not accurate and represents only the number of gun deaths that the media can find out about contemporaneously. Part of the purpose of this interactive is to point out how difficult it is to get accurate real-time numbers on this issue.

Using the most recent CDC estimates for yearly deaths by guns in the United States, it is likely that as of today, , roughly people have died from guns in the United States since the Newtown shootings. Compare that number to the number of deaths reported in the news in our interactive below, and you can see how undertold the story of gun violence in America actually is.

Click a marker below to filter incidents by that location. Shows only the 1,000 locations with the most deaths.

? OpenStreetMap contributors

• Any Age Group
• Adult
• Teen
• Child

?

?

Matched Deaths: or more since Newtown

Show Methodology

Each victim under 13 years of age is designated "child"; from 13 to 17: "teen"; 18 and older: "adult."

The same icons used to represent male victims is also used to represent victims of unknown gender. The same icons used to represent adult victims is also used to represent victims of unknown age group.

The yellow and blue backgrounds represent alternating days.

The information is collected by @gunDeaths from news reports about the deaths. The Slate interactives team and @gunDeaths continually manages and revises the data.

The data are not comprehensive because not all gun-related deaths are reported by the news media. For example, suicides often go unreported.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html

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Man Who Barricaded Himself In Home Found Dead By Family ...

Posted on: 9:51 pm, September 11, 2013, by Ashley Crockett and Eric Lipford, updated on: 05:38pm, September 12, 2013

(Memphis) A man who barricaded himself in a house located in the 4500 block of Jamaica Avenue Wednesday night was found dead Thursday morning.

Memphis police said the 36-year-old man shot at his 30-year-old girlfriend?s vehicle as she tried to leave after a fight.

The woman ran from the house and was not hit, and the man went into his home.

Officers knocked on the door and tried to call the man, but were never able to make contact.

For several hours, officers sat outside the house with guns pointed at the home waiting for the man to come out.

Around midnight, police packed up their gear and left the scene.

Police told News Channel 3 they believed the man was intoxicated and was passed out inside the house, so they would try to arrest the man during the day Thursday.

However, the man?s family arrived Thursday morning and found the man dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

It?s not clear if the man killed himself before or after police left.

Source: http://wreg.com/2013/09/11/reports-of-barricade-situation/

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FOR SUNDAY: Smartwatches will soon take off ? but not because they tell time

gadgets

Wilson Rothman NBC News

2 hours ago

Sean Gallup / Getty Images

Samsung's Pranav Mistry wearing the new Galaxy Gear smartwatch in Berlin last Wednesday.

I don't wear a watch. I haven't worn a watch since the aluminum band on my 1998 Swatch had a disagreement with the aluminum wrist pad on my 2008 MacBook Pro, and the MacBook won. Besides, the laptop, my cellphone, my cable box ? even our newest car ? all have clocks that set themselves. Don't get me wrong, I like watches. Watches are cool. But they're kinda ? dumb. Enter the smartwatch.

Now that Samsung's Galaxy Gear is officially on its way, along with Qualcomm's Toq and Sony's SmartWatch 2, wrist-tops suddenly have gravitas. No longer is the market just novel products from startups like Pebble and I'm Watch: Smartwatches are real, and they'll only get more real once Apple joins in. It's time to ask yourself: "Would I ever wear one?"

My first response, a knee-jerk one, was "Nope." Why would I put something chunky and plastic on my wrist, long after I ditched a far sleeker, more beautiful watch? Maybe the Galaxy Gear's rubber band won't scuff up my computer like my old Swatch, but it's still an encumbrance, and encumbrances are for shedding, no?

As I pondered, I pulled out my phone to check the time. Then I pulled out my phone to see who was calling. Then I pulled out my phone, while out at a business dinner, to see what my wife texted me. Then I pulled out my phone and I pulled out my phone and I pulled out my phone and ? you see where I'm going with this.

Wearing a "smartwatch means you look at your phone less," Philip Berne ? who recently started working for Samsung but has long had smart opinions on mobile products ? told me on Twitter, where I turned for?outside opinions. "Faster glance, less obvious/obtrusive."

I challenged Berne: "Yeah, but won't we just become the guys staring at our wrists all the time??" I worry that a smartwatch will be a lot harder to ignore than a stifled phone in a pocket or purse.

He replied, "As a step back from staring at phones all the time, it definitely feels like progress."

While my other Twitter commentators were divided ? traditional wristwatch lovers and those who have ditched watches were the most vocally opposed ? the enthusiasm for smartwatches was surprising. It's not necessarily a win for Samsung, though.

"If it's from Apple, yes. Samsung's offering is too expensive and limited," tweeted one friend, likely referring to the fact that the $300 Galaxy Gear, at launch, only works with the upcoming Galaxy Note 3 smartphone. "There will be newer and better ones available for less money soon," wrote another.?

The smartwatch movement may encounter a bit of a gender gap, too.

"The Samsung looks big, bulky and just ugly, regardless of strap color," wrote another Twitter friend. "The size of the Samsung is just enormous for a woman's wrist." At one point in our Twitter conversation, she said she's looking forward to Apple entering the fray.

"I'd be considering [a smartwatch] if it was even slightly appealing. Apple generally integrates form and function extremely well," she said.

Ranier Jensen / EPA

Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, presented at an IFA show booth in Berlin last Thursday.

With all this in my head, I turned to Jeff Orr, the senior practice director of mobile devices at ABI Research. Orr's firm predicts that between 1.2 and 1.4 million smartwatches will ship worldwide by year's end, before any Apple products appear.

It's not about telling time, says Orr. "I don't think people are going to buy this product because they're suddenly interested in seeing time. It'll just be one of the many uses for a smartwatch."

And despite the price, this will not be a new kind of mobile platform, Orr explained. "Initially these smartwatch products are accessories," he said. "They're reliant on the host device, a phone, to make calls, receive alerts, etc."

Smartwatches aren't ready to be a whole new category of mobile device, like tablets, Orr says, but one day they may grow up, and even gain cellular functionality. That's a few years off ? 2015 at the earliest ? because of electronics, mainly battery and heat constraints.

For now, more companies like Samsung need to enter the business, Orr says. The best contenders would be Apple and Sony, because, like Samsung, they have the brand, the product and software ecosystem, and the sales channels to pull it off.

Perhaps the best reason for a surge in smartwatch interest is that the most cutting-edge alternative is, well, awkward. Yes, I'm talking about Google Glass.?

Not for a moment have I been interested in wearing Google Glass ? no, not despite Google's repeated, ridiculous attempts to sway the fashion industry into convincing us that we won't look like total dweebs wearing it.

Google Glass may point to the future, one where we'll probably have miniature low-cost electronics embedded in most of our personal belongings (and in most of our persons, too). But the current system is not for me, or pretty much anyone else I know.

So here I am, turning the corner on this smartwatch thing. It's not an awkward return to the wristwatch era, but rather a smart pathway to wearable computing. The current crop is a bit clunky so I can wait for cheaper models and slimmer, better designs. But I'm finally willing to admit that in the next year or two, I'll be wearing one ? and there's a good chance you will, too.

Wilson Rothman is the Technology & Science editor at NBC News Digital. Catch up with him on Twitter at @wjrothman, and join our conversation on Facebook.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/663301/s/30f562a6/sc/28/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Ctechnology0Csunday0Esmartwatches0Ewill0Esoon0Etake0Enot0Ebecause0Ethey0Etell0Etime0E8C1110A3170A/story01.htm

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