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Former iOS jailbreak developer Comex headed to Google for internship

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Apr 24 2013 - 2:14 pm PT
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Former notable iOS jailbreak developer Comex announced on Twitter that he will be heading to Google for an internship position.

Comex previously interned for Apple, but left the company after failing to respond to an email to renew his contract with the company. It is also notable amidst a time where people are speculating that Apple is losing people resources to competitors such as Google.

Comex, whose real name is Nicholas Allegra, developed a notable Jailbreak.me hack that could jailbreak an iOS device via a simple website.


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Free 32GB #HTCOne to lucky reader from @att

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Apr 22 2013 - 11:03 am PT
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Update: We have a winner. Wilson Lam from sunny San Francisco

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6HKmEHVn_4Q

When we got our hands on the HTC One earlier this month we called it, “a standout, breathtaking Android phone for everyone,” with its stunning screen and snappy quad-core processor. The HTC One also boasts a 4.7-inch HD screen and HTC Sense features including HTC BlinkFeed, to customize your home screen with real-time updates, a live media gallery using HTC Zoe, and HTC BoomSound with  built-in Beats by Dr. Dre Audio.

The HTC One officially hit stores last week for AT&T and now we’re giving you a chance to win your very own 32GB HTC One in Silver with a “tweet to win” contest. To enter, simply follow @9to5Google and retweet this post telling us what you love about the #HTCOne. Be sure to tag the tweet with#HTCOne and @ATT in your response to be eligible. Please note, the prize is only for the phone and does not include service with AT&T and is only good for US residents.

Verizon recycling the original Lucid as the LG Optimus Exceed for prepaid

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Apr 22 2013 - 4:20 am PT
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LG_Optimus_Exceed

There’s a good reason I mistakenly referred to the upcoming LG Optimus Exceed as the Lucid Exceed in a recent tweet: the handset really is little more than a prepaid version of the original LG Lucid, whose sequel is now going for free on contract as part of a Mother’s Day promotion at Verizon. Along with the Optimus Zone (a.k.a. last year’s Optimus L3), Optimus Exceed will hit Big Red as a prepaid-only option, even carrying nearly the same model number (VS840PP) as its forebear. Even though the Lucid is currently retired, it still holds some value as an off-contract device, so expect to shell out not more than $100 for the aging handset.

Google looking to make strategic $50M investment in Vevo to keep its high-quality music content on YouTube

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Feb 6 2013 - 4:24 am PT
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2wQV2LeCqY&feature=youtu.be

Two weeks ago, we heard Google planned to invest in Vevo. Today, those rumors heat up with some specifics…

Bloomberg has the story:

Google Inc.’s YouTube is negotiating a $50 million equity investment in music video service Vevo LLC, according to two people with knowledge of the situation.
Google would own less than 10 percent of the company, giving Vevo a valuation of at least $500 million, said the people, who asked for anonymity because negotiations are still early and an agreement may not be reached.
The investment would be part of a broader contract to keep Vevo’s music videos on YouTube, the people said. Vevo, formed in 2009 by Vivendi SA’s Universal Music and Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment, and Google last year extended their existing contract until April.

Some of the most valuable (and clicked) content on YouTube is from Vevo-associated Artists. Vevo previously threatened to leave YouTube, so the investment would be to secure long-term access to the content advertised on and monetized by affiliate links to buy music.

It is also important to Google’s ecosystem to have easy and cheap access to all of Vevo’s content.


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Google Q4 2012 earnings call live [GOOG]

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Jan 22 2013 - 1:30 pm PT
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_p7w4cKdqTk#!

Larry Page’s voice was quite raspy still, but the news was good and the CEO is upbeat. Some notable bits he laid down on Motorola: “We’re working on batteries you won’t have to remember to charge and enclosures you don’t have to worry about dropping.”

I am excited about the business. In today’s multi screen world, the opportunities are endless. Think about your device. Battery life is a huge issue. You shouldn’t have to worry about constantly recharging your phone. When you drop your phone, it shouldn’t go splat. Everything should be a ton faster and easier. There’s real potential to invent new and better experiences.

Sounds good.

On the downside, Page noted, “Clearly there is work to be done managing our supply better, and that is a priority.” The fact that you can’t buy most of Google’s Nexus products right now clearly shows that.

GOOG stock price is up almost 5 percent.

Screen Shot 2013-01-22 at 1.56.43 PM

How to claim free Google Chromebook goodies: 100GB Google Drive storage, 12 Gogo in-air Wi-Fi passes

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Oct 22 2012 - 11:00 am PT
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Google launched its new ARM-powered Chromebook last week with two years of 100GB Google Drive storage and 12 Gogo in-air, Wi-Fi passes for free, and it even published FAQ pages so folks could access the perks in just a few quick steps.

Here’s how to claim the 100GB of Google Drive storage:

  1. Log into your Chromebook (ARM-powered Chromebook, Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550, or Samsung Chromebox Series 3 only).
  2. Update to to the latest version of Chrome OS (Chrome OS 23 required).
  3. Go to the Google Drive offer page, and the 100GB will soon load in your account (Google will verify the Chrome OS device—only one deal per Google account).

More details are available at Google’s Goodies page.

The steps for Gogo passes are below.


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Weird Al probably has to be more concerned than Google…

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Sep 25 2012 - 10:03 am PT
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlsahuZ_4oM

RIM Speedwagon says:

We are going to keep loving developers at Research In Motion, all the way to BlackBerry 10 and beyond. Watch our leadership team for developer relations bring back the band: Alec Saunders, VP Developer Relations & Ecosystem, Chris Smith, VP Application Platform & Tools, and Martyn Mallick, VP Global Alliances & Business. Thank you to those devs who are working hard, and for those jumping on board every day.

via

[tweet https://twitter.com/rossspeed/status/250632398352556035]
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Jealous of the new iOS Facebook App? An Android version is in the pipeline says Facebook Director of Mobile Engineering

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Aug 24 2012 - 6:45 am PT
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Android Police pulled some nice quotes from a recent Reddit thread on the future of the Facebook App on Android…

FB: Facebook is committed to both Android and iOS, and you’ve now seen what we can do. Stay tuned. (There are things in the Android app that aren’t in the iOS one today, like mentions in posts and comments, photo multi-upload, event creation. Since version 1.9 the Android app has tested faster than the iOS one, but FB-iOS 5.0 obviously changes the game.)

Android presents some unique challenges for developers, especially those with a large user base, but we do and will power through them. A lot of time is spent dealing with device-specific issues and limits, and you really have to fight with the toolkit to get iPhone-smooth interactions. Some vendors have a different HTTP stack (!), none implement the Camera APIs consistently, and reliability of hardware acceleration is…imperfect, GC pauses are terrible, lots of the toolkit insists on doing real work on the UI thread and allocating recreationally. On iOS you can test on 5 devices and basically have the market covered. We have to test on many dozens to get to the top 1/3 of our users, and then the tail starts to getreally long.

Q: Do you know when we could expect a native app too? I realise you probably can’t give away too much but are we talking weeks? Months?

A: Nobody is more excited about the state of our current development version than we are, and we will get it to users as soon as we can. One of our awesome PR people is standing next to me (10,000 miles away) with a gun (frowny face), so I can’t say more. Also, I have been doing software 20 years too long to make estimates in public. Experience and quality determine the time. I am utterly confident that you’ll find it worth the wait, and I wish I could give it to you today.

Q: Pretty much everyone I know has problems with the app even loading anything at all, and that’s before complaints about performance issues. This has gone on for ages, how come something as important as this has been unresolved for so long?

A: There are lots of reasons that people can experience problems, and we work through (and fix) different ones all the time. We have pretty detailed metrics on different aspects of performance, stability, load-time, load-error, etc. We can see them getting better in meaningful chunks, but that spreads out across 130M users in a way that isn’t to anyone’s satisfaction. (This is one area in which neither the inherent characteristics of the Android webview nor the OEM-specific tweaks that occur are our friends. Really, they aren’t even cordial.) We’ve been on fixed-date release cycles since 1.9, and we’re now down to every 4 weeks (where we’ll stay); this was a shit-ton of work for a large number of people, but it means we can get improvements out to users faster even while investing in longer-term features or architecture changes.

Q: What’s the best way for us, as users, to make it known that something isn’t working right with the app and make a difference? As of right now I could make quite a list of things that don’t work with the app, however it would feel a bit like a drop in the ocean for all the feedback you probably receive and feels like it would go unnoticed…We want to help :)

A: There’s a bug reporting mechanism either via the website or the app that someone on my team reads and rolls up for the developers weekly. My internal build has another mechanism for it, so I embarrassingly can’t tell you in more detail right now. :-/

Q: Is it true that Facebookers have been forced to use the android app to get a feel for how bad it is?

A: Neither the assertion nor the implication are true to my knowledge, and I am virtually certain that my knowledge on this issue is complete.

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From the ‘How bad could it be?’ dept: $50 Android 2.2 7-inch tablet with front and rear cameras from Pandigital

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Aug 20 2012 - 12:19 pm PT
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OneSaleADay offers the “Google Android Pandigital Planet 7″ Touchscreen Tablet with Android 2.2 OS, 2GB & MicroSD Expansion Slot!” for just $49.99 with $5 for shipping. That’s a pretty insane price even if this thing is just a 2GB photoframe. But it isn’t. It is an Android 2.2 tablet with front AND BACK cameras, SD card slot (take that Nexus 7!), and 802.11N networking.

You are not going to love reading on this, with a 800-by-600 resolution, but it might make a good Google Hangout/web browsing/ general-use Android tablet for those without a lot of cash.  Amazon’s reviewers were not very kind, but “you get what you pay for.” The full specs are below:
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LG’s 5-inch Vu phablet launches globally

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Aug 19 2012 - 9:25 pm PT
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LG ANNOUNCES GLOBAL AVAILABILITY OF OPTIMUS VU:
Largest LG Smartphone to Be Launched in
Europe, Asia, Middle East/Africa and Latin America

SEOUL, Aug. 20, 2012 – On the heels of its successful debut in Korea and Japan, the Optimus Vu: will make its global debut starting in select markets in Europe, Asia, Middle East/Africa and Latin America starting in September. With the world’s first 5-inch 4:3 aspect ratio display, the Optimus Vu: blurs the line between traditional tablets and smartphones for a truly unique smart device experience.

Since its March debut in Korea, the Optimus Vu: has sold over 500,000 units, demonstrating public acceptance of its form-factor. The reception the device received in Korea prompted LG to launch the Optimus Vu: in Japan this month, where it has also been received positively by Japanese consumers.

For the global roll-out, the Optimus Vu: will be equipped with NVIDIA? Tegra? 3 mobile processor, the super 4-PLUS-1™ quad-core with 5th battery-saver core, that offers a superb balance of performance and power requirements. 4 cores are used for high performance tasks such as games and multitasking. For voice call, email, music and video playback, only 5th battery-saver core is enabled and it consumes very less power.

When paired with the high-resolution 5-inch, 4:3 ratio IPS display, the Optimus Vu: becomes something special – a device that’s both pocketable and spacious. The Optimus Vu: will come with an upgraded version of QuickMemo™ and Notebook, two features which make great use of the large display real estate.

“The different form factor makes Optimus Vu: unique even in the 5-inch smartphone category which we expect will catch on once they become more widely available,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.

Key Specifications:
Operating System Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
Network 3G
Display 5.0-inch 4:3 ratio XGA IPS with 768 x 1024 pixels
Memory 32GB
Cameras 8.0MP rear / 1.3MP front
Size 139.6 x 90.4 x 8.5mm
Weight 168g

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Deal: Staples offers $15 off the Nexus 7

Avatar for 9to5 Staff Aug 15 2012 - 2:15 pm PT
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From 9to5Toys.com:

Staples now offers the Google Nexus 7 16GB 7″ Android Tablet, model no. NEXUS7/1B16, bundled with a $25 Google Play Credit for $249. Coupon code “99618” cuts it to $234. With free shipping, that’s the lowest total price we’ve seen. (It’s a current low by $15.) Sales tax is added where applicable. This 12-oz. tablet features a 7″ 1280×800 touchscreen display, scratch-resistant Corning glass, Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB memory, Bluetooth, GPS, front-facing camera, 802.11n wireless, Google Android 4.1 OS (Jelly Bean), and more

Our review is here.