Facebook plans suite of standalone mobile apps for 2014 | The Verge

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Two weeks after Messenger launched, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reflected on how the company had “historically” moved forward by building a lot of features into its core app — and how things were about to change. “We also have a few separate apps that are widely used, such as Instagram and Messenger, our standalone messaging app,” he said. “In the future, we expect to develop more of these services to help people share.”

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/16/5269664/facebook-plans-suite-of-standalone-mobile-apps-for-2014

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AIRBUS IS NOW MADE IN CHINA TOO, NOT JUST IN HAMBURG

China Bets Big On ‘Iron Bird’ Of The Skies

http://news.sky.com/story/1194101/china-bets-big-on-iron-bird-of-the-skies

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Malta might soon have to worry about a more real danger than Syrian refugees.

Malta might soon have to worry about a more real danger than Syrian refugees.

http://www.akkuza.com/2014/01/10/toxic/

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Typo case makes iPhone a BlackBerry clone – Business Today – Business News

Typo case makes iPhone a BlackBerry clone – Business Today – Business News

http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/gadget-watch-case-makes-iphone-a-blackberry-clone/1/202239.html

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Microsoft says Windows-phone is outselling iPhone, . . . in fantasyland !!

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Via Cult of Mac:

The iPhone 5c is not a cheap phone. In fact, it costs $549 without a contract. Apple has 0% share of the sub-$400 “budget” smartphone market by sole dint of the fact it doesn’t sell a budget iPhone.

But hey, don’t let that get in the way of Microsoft trying to claim they are outselling the iPhone in the under-$400 market, which is sort of like saying that Louis Vuitton is outselling Apple in designer clothes.

In an interview with Tech Radar, Microsoft’s director of communications Christopher Flores said that Windows Phone was outselling Apple’s iPhone line-up in 24 markets globally. When Techradar appeared skeptical, Flores admitted these were “emerging markets”… in other words, markets where a phone needs to be super-cheap to succeed, and which Apple is not even targeting.

It’s dumb, but that’s just how low-on-the-totem Microsoft is when it comes to the smartphone market these days: the only places it can declare victory are areas in which Apple is concertedly not competing.

Read more at:
http://www.cultofmac.com/261244/microsoft-says-windows-phone-outselling-iphone-fantasyland/

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The Snooze Button

buffalosoldier2014's avatarA journal of my thoughts

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The Snooze Button was invented some time shortly after the invention of the alarm clock itself, and
I remember the day I discovered it as a young boy. It was early in the morning, and my alarm clock was going off. I didn’t want to get up so I wondered if there was a way that I could silence the alarm for about nine minutes so that I could get a little more rest. This would allow me just enough time to toss and turn for 8 and 1 / 2 minutes, and sleep for the remaining 30 seconds, before starting the cycle all over again.

Although I had prayed for a snow day, I was forced from my slumber on this cold western New York morning by my alarm clock, which began emitting a heinous noise at the pre-agreed upon time of precisely 6am, Eastern Standard Time. I rolled…

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5 New Year’s Resolutions That Might Actually Work

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Great novels can change your life…and your brain

Getting lost in a good book can actually change your brain, with neural paths forming in the same way as if you were actually living the experience, scientists have found.

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Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird

Picture: c.Everett Collection / Rex Features

Read full article http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10553579/Great-novels-can-change-your-life…and-your-brain.html

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About the every expanding Chinese Supremacy

originally published on June 8, 2013, by Michael Snyder, Guest Post

This article, entitled “A Little Known Reality” though aimed at a US audience, gives a scary insight into China’s growing economic power.
In future, China will employ millions of American workers and dominate thousands of small communities all over the United States.
Chinese acquisition of U.S. Businesses set a new all-time record last year, and it is on pace to shatter that record this year.

The Smithfield Foods acquisition is an example.
Smithfield Foods is the largest pork producer and processor in the world.
It has facilities in 26 U.S. States and it employs tens of thousands of Americans.
It directly owns 460 farms and has contracts with approximately 2,100 others.
But now a Chinese company has bought it for $4.7 billion, and that means that the Chinese will now be the most important employer in dozens of rural
Communities all over America.

Thanks in part to the U.S.A.’s massively bloated trade deficit with China, the Chinese have trillions of dollars to spend.
They are only just starting to exercise their economic muscle.

It is important to keep in mind that there is often not much of a difference between “the Chinese government”
and “Chinese corporations”. In 2011, 43 percent of all profits in China were produced by companies where the
Chinese government had a controlling interest.

Last year a Chinese company spent $2.6 billion to purchase AMC entertainment – one of the largest movie theater
Chains in the United States. Now that Chinese company controls more movie ticket sales than anyone else in the world.

But China is not just relying on acquisitions to expand its economic power. “Economic beachheads” are being
established all over America. For example, Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group, Inc. recently broke ground
on a $100 million plant in Thomasville, Alabama. Many of the residents of Thomasville, Alabama will be glad to have
jobs, but it will also become yet another community that will now be heavily dependent on communist China.

And guess where else Chinese companies are putting down roots? Detroit.
Chinese-owned companies are investing in American businesses and new vehicle technology,
selling everything from seat belts to shock absorbers in retail stores, and hiring experienced engineers and designers
in an effort to soak up the talent and expertise of domestic automakers and their suppliers.
If you recently purchased an “American-made” vehicle, there is a really good chance that it has a number of Chinese parts in it.
Industry analysts are hard-pressed to put a number on the Chinese suppliers operating in the United States.
China seems particularly interested in acquiring energy resources in the United States. For example, China is actually
mining for coal in the mountains of Tennessee. Guizhou Gouchuang Energy Holdings Group spent 616 million dollars
to acquire Triple H Coal Co. in Jacksboro, Tennessee. At the time, that acquisition really didn’t make much news, but now
a group of conservatives in Tennessee is trying to stop the Chinese from blowing up their mountains and taking their coal.

And pretty soon China may want to build entire cities in the United States just like they have been doing in other countries.
Right now China is actually building a city larger than Manhattan just outside Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
Starting to get the picture? China is on the rise. If in doubt, just read the following:
– When you total up all imports and exports, China is now the number one trading nation on the entire planet.
– Overall, the U.S. has run a trade deficit with China over the past decade that comes to more than 2.3 trillion dollars.
– China has more foreign currency reserves than any other country on the planet.
– China now has the largest new car market in the entire world.
– China now produces more than twice as many automobiles as the United States does. After being bailed out by
U.S. taxpayers, GM is involved in 11 joint ventures with Chinese companies.
– China is the number one gold producer in the world.
– The uniforms for the U.S. Olympic team were made in China.
– 85% of all artificial Christmas trees the world over are made in China.
– The new World Trade Center tower in New York is going to include glass imported from China.
– China now consumes more energy than the United States does.
– China is now in aggregate the leading manufacturer of goods in the entire world.
– China uses more cement than the rest of the world combined.
– China is now the number one producer of wind and solar power on the entire globe.
– China produces 3 times as much coal and 11 times as much steel as the United States does.
– China produces more than 90 percent of the global supply of rare earth elements.
– China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of any national defense system.
– In published scientific research articles China is expected to become number one in the world very shortly.

And what we have seen so far may just be the tip of the iceberg.
For now, I’ll just leave you with one piece of advice – learn to speak Chinese. You’re going to need it

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GIORGIO MORODER’S headline set at Electronic Beats Festival Vienna

During 2013, the Italian producer and composer was brought out of semi-retirement for a Daft Punk collaboration, and since then a swell of interest in his work has led to Moroder taking up DJing.

Watch edited highlights from disco legend GIORGIO MORODER’S headline set at Electronic Beats Festival Vienna, which took place on 23rd November 2013. a living legend; the Munich Machine himself, Giorgio Moroder. At seventy-odd years of age he looks like a benevolent grandpa but don’t be fooled.

His late period revival, thanks to Daft Punk, is shot through with vitality made apparent in the way he mouths along and conducts his way through his set, the odd gesture and flourish supported with a flash of strobe. And while his DJ set is essentially a comprehensive megamix of his most loved work, the heady blend of pioneering and populism leaves the venue reeling.

From “Love to Love You Baby”, which is thrown in early, to Sparks’ “Beat the Clock”, via a disco-fied “Tony’s Theme” from Scarface, arguably Moroder’s best soundtrack work, then straight on through into “Together In Electric Dreams”all the big hitters are here, often slammed together with lashings of flanger effect. It’s quite the ride with just a couple of minutes from each before the next world-famous record is introduced and we’re ripping off our clothes with excitement because, oh God, it’s “What a Feeling” from Flashdance.

This is disco writ large in the stars: if you’ve got a handbag, dance around it, if you’ve got a podium, dance on it, hell, if you’ve got a white horse, get on it, give it a ride. But for all the outrageous, chart monstering megahits, it’s “I Feel Love” that gets the biggest response. And rightly so, those carnal arpeggios, the cold, steely throb and Donna Summer’s cyborg vixen schtick feels ageless in a way that say, Limahl’s “Neverending Story” doesn’t (but that one gets a big cheer, too).

It seems that Moroder enjoys it as much as us too, playing, naturally, “Giorgio By Moroder”, Blondie’s “Call Me” and, um, Lady Gaga‘s “Applause” as an encore before begrudgingly leaving the stage amidst chants of, “Giorgio! Giorgio!”

READ AN INTERVIEW WITH THE COMPOSER – http://www.mixmag.net/words/interviews/qa-giorgio-moroder

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