We thought Mango’s nectar was already pretty damn sweet, but a group of young developers recently took up the challenge to make the next generation Windows Phone 7 experience even more delicious. Following up on last year’s ‘Rockstar’ competition, Microsoft asked students to submit Mango app prototypes via Twitter, with the promise of developers phones for the top entries. Among the top 20 #WPAppItUp submissions are a program that helps the colorblind figure out what shade of puce they’re peeping, and a sadistic alarm clock that requires users to solve puzzles before hitting the snooze button. Apparently, Microsoft still has 30 Windows Phones to give away, and is looking for young devs to offer up America’s next top Mango app. Submission guidelines can be found at the source link below. [Thanks, E-Dan] Microsoft crowns 20 winners in Mango app contest, losers go home fruitless originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 15:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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With the deadline to raise the debt ceiling fast approaching, things are getting a little ridiculous in Congress. Jon Stewart closed out this week of “Daily Show” Thursday night with a look at one of the GOP’s most bizarre choices as of late: showing freshman senators a clip from Ben Affleck’s “The Town” as a motivation tool. Yes, “The Town.” The one about the bank robbers. When Republican House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy showed the scene at a Tuesday meeting, the idea was to urge freshmen and Tea Partiers to drop their opposition to House Speaker Boehner’s debt ceiling plan. The scene chosen from the film shows Affleck unenthusiastically inviting another bank robber to commit a crime, who promptly agrees by asking, “Who’s car are we going to take?.” At least one member of Congress, Rep. Allen West, said he liked it and was moved to side with the Republican plan, adding “I’ll drive the car.” Stewart was amazed: “Quick Robin! To the Batshit mobile!” Watch the clip below to hear how Stewart breaks down the scene to try and come up with any good reason why the GOP would want to make such an analogy. Why compare themselves to violent sociopathic criminals? As a bonus, Stewart also presents what could be one of the funniest ideas for a cable news show we’ve ever heard, “Chuck Schumer’s Meshugena Movie Breakdown Show.” WATCH: International users click here to watch
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Internet browser passes Firefox, with speed and a nationwide advertising campaign credited for the rise in popularity Google’s Chrome is Britain’s second most popular browser, a sign of the internet giant’s increasing grip on the UK search market. Three years after launch, Chrome last month captured 22% of UK users and marginally overtook Mozilla’s Firefox browser, according to the web metrics firm Statcounter. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is losing market share to Chrome but remains the most popular browser for UK users with 45% – although it has a head start by being pre-installed on almost all computers sold in Britain. Apple’s Safari is UK number four, with a 9% share. Google’s rise in the browser market is in part down to nationwide advertising – Chrome is the first Google product advertised on British TV – but is largely attributed to its speed. Lars Bak, the Google engineer responsible for Chrome, said the goal had never been to attract a huge user base, but to energise a dormant browser market: “Speed is a fundamental part of it, but it’s also about the minimal design and the way it handles security. If you as a user try [to load] a webpage and it feels snappy, it’s really hard to go back [to another browser]. It has shown that people spend more time interacting with the web.” Unlike most of Google’s talent based at its Mountain View headquarters in California, Bak works from a converted farmhouse in the Danish countryside two hours from Copenhagen. He has become obsessed with speed, and despite numerous tests that show Chrome outstrips all rivals , he thinks it could be much faster. “You should never be happy with [existing] speed,” he said. “Of course it gets harder to make substantial gains, but it’s all healthy competition. From the beginning we wanted everybody to be fast, and now all browsers are fast. I’m absolutely flabbergasted [by the improvements made by rival browsers].” Chrome is the number three worldwide, with a 20.65% market share according to Statcounter. But analysts expect it to edge ahead of Firefox, which has dipped steadily since January. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has also fallen heavily, to 43%, with warnings about security vulnerabilities. Google last month announced its Chromebook laptop, based on its browser and seen as another ambitious attack on Microsoft; it will be made by Samsung and Acer, companies that previously made computers running Microsoft’s software. Unlike most computers, the Chromebook has almost no capacity to store and hosts most data online in a “cloud”. Bak said: “The Chromebook is really important because it tries to simplify the machine – it is basically no maintenance, which means you can cut the price. If all you are doing is using a browser it’s a fantastic tool.” Chrome Internet Web browsers Google Firefox Internet Explorer Josh Halliday guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …With today’s Republican Party being led around by Tea Party extremists, Thomas Friedman misses the adult supervision of George HW Bush, he writes in the New York Times . Calling him “one of our most underrated presidents,” Friedman contends that Bush p è re brought foreign policy “deftness” and, more importantly,…
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Renewed appeals for aid made as wet weather adds to misery of thousands camped around Mogadishu Tens of thousands of famine-stricken Somali refugees were left cold and drenched after torrential rains pounded their makeshift structures in the capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday, leading to renewed appeals for aid. Rain is needed to alleviate the drought but it wrecked many of the makeshift homes made of sticks and scraps of cloth. Suffering refugees said more aid was vital but agencies have limited reach in Somalia where Islamist militants, including the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab, are waging an insurgency against the country’s weak UN-backed government. “We are living in plight, we left our homes, lost our animals and farms so we ask everyone to help us to survive,” Abdi Muse Abshir said. Lul Hussein, a mother of five, said her family had a sleepless night after their makeshift home crumbled. “We are starved and we don’t have enough help,” she said. “Who’s helping us? No one! So we are already between death and bad life.” Al-Shabab, the most dangerous group among the militants al-Shabab, has barred major relief organisations from operating in the territories it controls. The UN said tens of thousands of people have died in Somalia in areas held by the Islamist rebels because food aid could not reach them. The African Union peacekeeping force fears al-Shabab may try to attack the Mogadishu camps that house tens of thousands of famine refugees, disrupting even further the distribution of food aid. The AU force is attempting to push the militants’ front line away from the camps. The drought and the famine have affected more than 11.8 million people in the Horn of Africa and created a triangle of hunger where the borders of Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia meet. The World Food Programme says it cannot reach 2.2 million Somalis who live in territory controlled by al-Shabab in south-central Somalia. Somalia Famine Aid Natural disasters and extreme weather Africa guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Iranian woman blinded by acid attack pardons assailant as he faces same fate
July 31, 2011 No Comment
Ameneh Bahrami withdraws ‘eye for an eye’ retribution hours before surgeons prepared to blind him with acid A woman blinded with acid in Iran has pardoned her attacker, a man who was scheduled to lose his sight in an eye for an eye punishment on Sunday. Majid Movahedi, 30, had been taken to Tehran’s judiciary hospital to be blinded with acid after being rendered unconscious, but Ameneh Bahrami, his victim, spared him at the last minute, Iran’s semi-official Isna news agency reported. Iran’s judiciary had given the green light to the administration for the retributive punishment, which would have been the first blinding of a convict in the country, but human rights groups across the world called on Bahrami, who had asked for eye for an eye justice in the court, to pardon him. Bahrami, who had refused to marry Movahedi, was disfigured and blinded by him when he threw a jar of acid in her face while she was returning home from work in 2004. “I feel very good. I’m happy that I pardoned him,” Isna quoted her as saying. “For seven years I’ve been trying to pursue retribution and to prove that the punishment for an acid attack is retribution but today I decided to pardon him. This was my right but in future the next victim might not do the same.” On Sunday, Bahrami asked for financial compensation instead of blinding Movahedi, an option she had previously refused to consider. Speaking to Isna, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, prosecutor general of Tehran, confirmed that Bahrami had pardoned Movahedi and described her move as a “courageous act”. Islam’s Sharia law allows for qisas (retribution) but it also advises for clemency, especially before and during Ramadan, which starts on Monday in Iran. “Inflict the same life on him that he inflicted on me,” she had told the court. Bahrami said that international focus on the case was a factor she considered in pardoning Movahedi. “The second reason I decided to pardon him was because it seemed like the entire world was waiting to see what will happen,” she said. In a highly publicised dossier in November 2008, a criminal court in Tehran ordered retribution on Movahedi after he admitted throwing acid at Bahrami, and entitled her to blind him with acid. “He was holding a red container in his hand. He looked into my eyes for a second and threw the contents of the red container into my face,” she told the court in 2008. In reaction to the news, Amnesty International, which had urged Bahrami to pardon Movahedi, called on Iran to review its penal code. “Majid Movahedi committed a horrendous act which has ruined Ameneh Bahrami’s life, and the state has a responsibility to bring him to justice and to ensure that Ameneh Bahrami receives recompense for the damage done to her,” said Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui. “But deliberate blinding inflicted by a medical expert is a cruel punishment which amounts to torture, which is prohibited under international law. “The Iranian authorities should review the penal code as a matter of urgency to ensure those who cause intentional serious physical harm, like acid attacks, receive an appropriate punishment – but that must never be a penalty which in itself constitutes torture,” she added. Bahrami, who has an electronics degree and worked in a medical engineering company before the attack, moved to Spain with the help of the Iranian government where she has undergone a series of unsuccessful operations. She briefly recovered half the vision in her right eye in 2007 but an infection blinded her again. Bahrami has recently published a book in Germany, Eye for an Eye, based on her personal life and her suffering since she was blinded. Iran Amnesty International Human rights Middle East Torture Saeed Kamali Dehghan guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …President Obama is tacking to the right, trying to shore up his appeal to independents in 2012, but in the process he risks badly damaging his liberal base and creating a rift with his own party, reports the New York Times . In debt ceiling negotiations, he proposed spending cuts to…
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Islamist terrorists also mentioned in briefing, as anarchists complain of being criminalised for their beliefs What should you do if you discover an anarchist living next door? Dust off your old Sex Pistols albums and hang out a black and red flag to make them feel at home? Invite them round to debate the merits of Peter Kropotkin’s anarchist communism versus the individualist anarchism of Emile Armand? No – the answer, according to an official counter-terrorism notice circulated in London last week, is that you must report them to police immediately. This was the surprising injunction from the Metropolitan Police issued to businesses and members of the public in Westminster last week. There was no warning about other political groups, but next to an image of the anarchist emblem, the City of Westminster police’s “counter terrorist focus desk” called for anti-anarchist whistleblowers stating: “Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.” The move angered some anarchists who complained that being an anarchist should not imply criminal behaviour. They said they feel unfairly criminalised for holding a set of political beliefs. The feeling of disproportion was compounded by the briefing note author making a similar request about Islamist terrorists a few lines further down. Under an image of flag with a gold dot beneath some Arabic script it added: “Often seen used by al-Qaida in Iraq. Any sightings of these images should be reported to your local police.” “It unfairly implies that anyone involved in anarchism should be known to the police and is involved in an dangerous activity,” said Jason Sands, an anarchist from South London. “There is nothing inherently criminal about political philosophy whatever it is. The police work under the convention on human rights which disallows discrimination against people because of their political beliefs and even the request for information would seem to be in breach of that. It also seems to be a bit useless as a way of gathering intelligence. It isn’t focused on anything specific and they are just asking for general information. Imagine calling up and saying ‘there’s an anarchist in my building. What should I do?’ It doesn’t make sense.” The note was issued from Belgravia Police Station as part of Project Griffin which aims to “advise and familiarise managers, security officers and employees of large public and private sector organisations across the capital on security, counter-terrorism and crime prevention issues”. Sean Smith, external relations officer for Solfed, the British section of the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers’ Association, said of the call for whistleblowers: “It’s pretty absurd, but not surprising, when the state seeks to criminalise ideas it deems to be dangerous to its own survival”. “We are a revolutionary union initiative,” he explained. “Members of our organisation believe in bringing about radical social change through workplace and community organising, not acts of terrorism. We have made extensive information about our ideas and strategy freely available online.” Small groups of anarchists masked and dressed in black did cause some damage to shop windows in central London during anti-cuts demonstrations in the Spring, but there has been little activity of late. The next big anarchist event in London appears hardly likely to concern the police. It is a book fair in October with “all-day cabaret starring assorted ranters, poets, singers and comics; all-day film showings and two kids’ spaces”. Police London Protest Robert Booth guardian.co.uk
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Minister taunts Labour over election argument, claiming Conservatives’ efficiency target exceeded by £500m The government has achieved £3.75bn in savings over the 10 months from the election in May 2010 to this March, leading the cabinet office minister Francis Maude to muse on what his Labour predecessors, including Ed Miliband, “had been doing in this office before me”. The savings have been vetted by the National Audit Office, and are what Maude described as “the low hanging fruit” before further very significant savings were made in coming years.Maude said that the bulk of the cash had come from cutting waste, and not from cutting services. The Conservative claim that savings could finance cuts in national insurance was one of the chief battlegrounds of the last election. Maude said that his figures showed the Conservatives had been proved right. The Tories wrong-footed Labour in the campaign by gathering business support to endorse the efficiency savings and condemn Labour’s national insurance rise as a jobs tax. The Conservatives had promised to cut £3.2bn in wasteful spending as part of a wider package of £6.2bn overall cuts in 2010-11. The efficiency savings target had been exceeded by £500m, said Maude. He said the savings from central government departments were equivalent to the salaries of 200,000 junior nurses, or 150,000 secondary school teachers. “These savings prompt me to ask what on earth my predecessors in this office such as Ed Miliband were doing,” he said. In terms of government property sold, Maude said t was equivalent in area to 70 Wembley football pitches. He said “We have just got started on this. This is the low hanging fruit, but there is a lot more to come, especially in reducing fraud and error, increasing on line delivery of services, and open up public services to competition from mutual and private sector.” Savings made include £870m from cutting departmental spending on consulting, £500m by reducing spend on temporary staff, £800m from renegotiating deals with large government suppliers, £400m cut in government advertising and communications, £90m by better controls of property lease renewals, and a £300m cut in the civil service salaries bill through a reduction of staffing equivalent to 17,000 places. “It is about bearing down on things, as we did within days of coming into office, I just said that no new property lease, or lease renewal, could go ahead without it passing my desk first. “There was an attitude [under Labour] that, if the government wanted something done, they would set up an advertising campaign and a website. We have just cut that out.” He said he was not willing to put a number on how large the efficiencies might be in the future, partly since it would be harder to distinguish the savings made by a government department, as opposed to a centrally driven efficiiency programme. He added a target could also become the limit of what should be saved when he said the figure could be higher. Ian Watmore, chair of the cabinet office efficiency and reform group, last month told MPs on the public accounts committee that some of the savings had been driven by Maude personally, but said “the focus was moving away from a central push”. Ministers also want to see the driving down of costs, including renegotiations with suppliers to extend from Whitehall to other parts of the public sector such as the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade. Watmore has claimed nearly a quarter of the £81bn projected cut in government spending over four years can come from central government “applying real aggressive efficiencies to itself”. Critics have claimed that some savings are bogus, in that some renegotiated IT contracts led to the provision of a more limited service. Similarly, cuts in civil service numbers may lead to a cut in service standard rather than greater efficiency. The efficiency board chaired by the former BP chairman Lord Browne is also focusing on improving data quality so efficiency can be better measured between departments. Conservatives Francis Maude Labour Ed Miliband Liberal-Conservative coalition Economic policy Patrick Wintour guardian.co.uk
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Cilantro might be the most polarizing thing on this planet. Some people can’t eat a fish taco without it, others cry frothy tears of dishsoap at its mere mention. The same may well be true of the LG Optimus 3D (known as the Thrill 4G in the US). We already felt a little torn about the device when we first got our hands on it back in February. Sure, it packed some extra heft and, ahem, Android 2.2.2. But its stupor-inducing, 3D display (combined with some truly poignant marketing) was just enough to whet our appetites. Plus, after having already scarfed down a bowl of HTC’s EVO 3D , we were more than a little keen on tasting LG’s take on the glasses-free 3D recipe – a young and intriguing smartphone genre. Now that we finally have, we’re ready to tackle a question for the ages: dishsoap or delicacy? Gallery: LG Optimus 3D review Continue reading LG Optimus 3D review LG Optimus 3D review originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 31 Jul 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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