Chance Miller

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8K8YlA7–dk

As we told you last week, Google’s ad business brings in a lot of money, and today, it will celebrate the ten year anniversary of one of its most successful platforms to date. In a post on the official Google blog, Susan Wojcicki, Google’s SVP of ads and commerce, announced that ten years ago today, the company launched AdSense to help publishers earn money by placing ads on their websites. Fast forward 10 years and AdSense is now used by more than 2 million publishers, who earned a combined total of more than $7 billion last year alone.

Happy birthday @AdSense! 10 years after launch, more than 2 million publishers earn money from AdSense http://t.co/IAVeeBvkxl

— Google (@Google) June 18, 2013

Google touts that people have been able to live their dream job thanks to the money AdSense gets them.
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After teasing the device for several weeks, Huawei finally unveiled its first true flagship in the Ascend P6 this morning in London. Just like the company teased, the device is ultra thin, coming in at just 6.18mm thin. Its size doesn’t compromise its specs, however, as the Ascend P6 is packing a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.5GHz and 2GB of RAM. It features a 4.7-inch display with a 720p resolution. The screen has “MagicTouch” technology, which essentially just means you can have on gloves and still use the display.

As far as the camera goes, the device is packing an 8MP shooter with an f/2.0 aperture and 4cm macro mode. Huawei is also touting its “IMAGEsmart” technology, which will find the best shooting mode automatically based on your surroundings. The front-facing camera is a whopping 5MP and has a setting that will automatically smooth out skin texture, adjust the clarity of your eyes, and as the company’s CEO says, essentially makes you look younger. 
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After a few months of speculation and rumors, T-Mobile has finally announced that it will carry Sony’s Xperia Z flagship. While no specific pricing or availability was announced, the carrier said it will launch in the “coming weeks.” It will be available in black, as well as purple for a limited time.

Specs are the same as the international version, which include a 1.5GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, a 5-inch 1080p display with Sony’s Mobile Bravia engine, a 13MP rear-facing camera, and a water and dust resistant design. It will also carry support for T-Mobile up and coming LTE network. 
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Earlier this month, we told you about government officials calling on major tech companies to improve anti-theft features of their devices. At WWDC this year, Apple did just that and announced its new Activation Lock feature. Now, all eyes have shifted to the other large smartphone manufacturer, Samsung. According to a report out of Korean site MK, Samsung is set to launch its anti-theft features for smartphones as early as July.

The feature will essentially be a kill switch that will allow carriers, manufacturers, and even the government to remotely wipe, lock, and disable any smartphone that has been stolen. Once this is done, the device would be rendered useless, even when a new SIM card is installed.

A kill switch is exactly what government officials called for earlier this month, and what it and manufacturers likely discussed when they met last week at a “smartphone summit” to talk about mobile security. 
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When Google announced it was shutting down Reader, struggling web company Digg announced that they would develop a replacement service. In a blog post on Monday, the company announced that its much-awaited RSS service would open to the public on June 26th.

The service, which will be called Digg Reader, will have very basic functions, including a feature that allows users to vote stories to the top that they believe are important. When the company surveyed more than 18,000 users, many wanted the service to be clean, simple, and fast. Digg, of course, says it has met all of those demands.

Within 60 days of the launch, many features will continue to be released, including:
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Last week AT&T confirmed that it would carry the Galaxy Note 8.0 in the “coming weeks,” but now we finally have detailed pricing and release information. The carrier has announced that it will begin to offer the device on June 21st for $399.99 with a new two-year contract. For those wondering, that’s the same price as the WiFi only model, which obviously does not carry a contract with it. If you are looking to go all out, however, you can pick the device up for $200 on contract when purchased at the same time as a Galaxy S4, Galaxy S4 Active, or Galaxy Note II.

As far as specs go, the device is packing a 1.6GHz Exynos 4110 quad-core processor paired with 2GB of RAM. It will ship with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and Samsung’s TouchWiz overlay. Other features include WiFi, LTE, GPS, BlueTooth 4.0, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, a compass, and a hefty 4,600mAh battery.
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A few weeks ago, Google unveiled a new tabbed interface for Gmail that divides your inbox into several tabs, including primary, promotions, and updates. It looks like the company has some bigger plans for revenue with the third of those sections, however.

According to a new report from the Google System blog, the company is testing ads that resemble emails in the promotion tab. The ads look exactly like other emails in the inbox, but have a small ad logo below the sender’s name.

“It’s a new type of ad which you can forward to a friend, or star to save it to your inbox. If you dismiss this ad, you won’t see it again,” informs Google. You can click “dismiss” or use the “x” icon to remove an ad. If you want to see all the sponsored promotions for your account, go to this page.

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After months of leaks and rumors, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside finally confirmed the Moto X phone at the AllThingsD conference, but was cagey with details and didn’t share all that much. Thanks to the often reliable @evleaks on Twitter, however, we now have a pretty good idea of what to expect when the X phone hits the market.

According to the report, the device will feature a 1.7GHz dual-core MSM8960 Pro processor, 720p display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, 10MP rear-facing camera, 2MP front-facing shooter, and Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. For those wondering, that’s the Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, which we saw in devices like the LG Optimus G last year.

At the AllThingsD conference earlier this year, Woodside said the Motorola Moto X phone would be manufactured in Texas and be coming to all major US carriers sometime in October.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=m96tYpEk1Ao

We’ve seen several reports of Google wanting to bring Internet access to emerging-countries, and the company has now announced a project that will greatly help it accomplish that goal. In a post on the official Google blog,  Mike Cassidy announced the next “moonshot” from Google’s mysterious X lab, balloon-powered Internet access.

Google believes that it might be possible to build a ring of balloons that travel around the globe on the stratospheric winds and provide Internet service to the earth below. The company does warn us that this idea is still in the very early days of development, but says that it has built a system that uses balloons carried by winds at altitudes as high as planes and beams Internet at speeds as fast or faster than current 3G networks. 
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Earlier this month, a report emerged claiming that Samsung and Jay-Z were on the verge of signing a marketing deal worth upwards of $20 million, and now Samsung has confirmed the deal. The company has just sent out a mysterious email to the press inviting us all to tune into game 5 of the NBA Finals on Sunday. It looks like the deal has to do with music, which you’d expect from a Jay-Z partnership, as the promo image tells us to “turn up the volume.”

Game 5 kicks off at 8PM EST on ABC, but Samsung teases it will take over at 9:15PM EST. We’ll be sure to let you know what they have in store.

According to a new report out of the Financial Times, Google is being investigated by European officials due to allegations that it has anti-competitive deals set up with select smartphone manufacturers. This isn’t the first time Google has run into trouble with the EU, as the company has been investigated for antitrust issues in the past.

Microsoft and Nokia made these allegations and claim that Google is forcing Android manufacturers to delay the launch of devices running their two operating systems. The European Union is also looking into claims that Google requires manufacturers to preload its services on their devices.
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There’s no doubting that we are going to see a new Nexus tablet at some point this year, but the main question surrounds when we will see it. Now that Google I/O has come and gone, it’s even more up in the air. If a recent FCC filing discovered by Engadget is anything to go by, however, then we aren’t too far away from a launch at this point.
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Samsung seems to be pretty interested in the Android-powered camera market for some reason. Yesterday, the company announced the Galaxy S4 Zoom, a variant of the latest Galaxy S flagship with a 16MP sensor and 10x optical zoom. It looks like Samsung is looking to take it even further, however, and announce an Android-powered camera with interchangeable lenses.

Vietnamese technology website Tinhte has published a series of what appear to press shots of the Samsung Galaxy NX. According to the report, the device will feature a APS-C 20.3 MP sensor, as well as support for ISO up to 25,600, and video recording capabilities up to 1080p. It will have a 4.3-inch rear facing touchscreen and run Android 4.2 Jelly Bean with Samsung’s TouchWiz overlay on top. The Galaxy NK will also have a pop-up flash and accessory connecting pins. It will rely heavily on a touch user-interface, as the only buttons appear to be a power switch, camera button, shutter release and multifunction swivel wheel. 
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AT&T has officially announced that it will carry the Galaxy S4 Active on its network starting June 21st for $199 with a new two-year agreement, though pre-orders will start tomorrow, June 14th. We’ve known the device was coming for a while, as press images of the phone leaked back in May and a teaser video for the device was released by AT&T yesterday.

The Galaxy S4 Active will be available in two colors, Urban Gray and Dive Blue, and packs a 5-inch TFT display with Gorilla Glass and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. The device is powered by a quad-core processor and has an 8MP rear facing camera.

The main selling point of the Galaxy S4 Active is its rugged design. AT&T touts that the device is “built for life,” as it is IP67 certified to be water-resistant and dust-proof. It also offers an Aqua Mode camera feature, which lets you snap pictures and images while you are underwater:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SR1tCDxqS2Y

The much-rumored Galaxy S4 Active was finally announced by Samsung one week ago, but without any sort of United States carrier information. We’d seen press images of the device leak with AT&T branding, and on Wednesday, the carrier released a teaser video that all but confirms the Galaxy S4 Active for its network.

The video shows someone dropping a phone into a bucket of water, but then receiving a call and having to pull it out to answer. At the very end, he holds the phone up to his ear and you can clearly see the top of the Galaxy S4 Active’s design and the same AT&T logo that we saw in the leaked press shots a few weeks ago. The video teases that we will “find out more” tomorrow, June 13th.

The Galaxy S4 Active’s main selling point is obviously the water and dust proof design. It will be protected in those substances for up to 30 minutes of submergence at a depth of one meter:
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Samsung’s Galaxy Note smartphones have had a huge amount of success, so it makes sense that the company would want to try to bring the branding over to its tablet lineups. We’ve already seen the Galaxy Note 10.1 here in the United States on Verizon, and another carrier model looks to be coming soon.

AT&T has announced that it will begin to offer the Galaxy Note 8.0 with LTE capabilities “in the coming weeks”. Pricing details and specific availability information were left out, unfortunately. The WiFi only Galaxy Note 8.0 is offered for $399 stateside, so we can expect the LTE model to come in at at about $100-ish more than that.
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