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Obama to personally tweet from Twitter account (AP) : Technet |
- Obama to personally tweet from Twitter account (AP)
- Games company Sega becomes latest hacking victim (AP)
- FTC lets Microsoft proceed with purchase of Skype (AP)
- The History of Email [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable)
- Clinic tries to wean addicts off Internet fix (AFP)
- Sega attacked, hacker group offers to take revenge (Reuters)
- Why Android Tablets Fail (ContributorNetwork)
- How BlueStacks will make Android apps work on Windows PCs (Appolicious)
- Google's 'Photovine' trademark sparks photo-sharing rumors (Digital Trends)
- Sun Has Giant Supersonic Waves Bigger Than Earth (SPACE.com)
- How SavingStar pays users to shop for groceries with iPhone and Android apps (Appolicious)
- 2012 Audi A7 Review (Digital Trends)
- New Apple iPad 2 Ad: 'Now, There's This' (PC Magazine)
| Obama to personally tweet from Twitter account (AP) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 10:41 AM PDT MINNEAPOLIS – President Barack Obama is taking a more active role on Twitter, 140 characters at a time. Obama's campaign said in a posting on its website Friday that Obama will tweet regularly from the popular social media service and his personal tweets will be signed "-BO." The campaign said it will now manage both Obama's Twitter account and Facebook page. Obama tweeted personally early Friday evening, welcoming followers to "a new (at)BarackObama. From now on, (hash)Obama2012 staff will manage this account; tweets from the President will be signed "-BO." The campaign said on its website that the changes "will give us new opportunities to make the most of these channels, using them not only to report what the president is doing every day but to connect to the millions of supporters who will be driving this campaign." Obama has more than 8.69 million followers on Twitter, making him the third most-followed account among Twitter users, according to Twitter statistics website twittercounter.com. Obama trails only entertainers Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber in followers. Obama's avatar, or photo accompanying his Twitter account, also changed from his official White House photo to a photo of Obama smiling, his 2012 campaign logo resting along the base of the avatar. Digital media experts said the changes will give the account more authenticity and could lead to the president interacting with followers, using the account to seek contributions or asking them to volunteer for his campaign. "The best Twitter accounts are the ones that are managed by the people whose name is on the tweet," said Tim Tagaris, new media director for the Service Employees International Union, on the sidelines of the Netroots Nation convention in Minneapolis. "People sign up to hear from people on Twitter because they want to hear from that person, not their staff." ___ Ken Thomas can be reached at http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas |
| Games company Sega becomes latest hacking victim (AP) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 04:54 AM PDT LONDON – Video game developer Sega says it has been hacked, making it the latest in a string of games companies to be attacked. The company sent an email to users of the Sega Pass system on Friday to warn them that email addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords had been stolen from online database. The email stressed that no financial information was at risk and that it has launched a probe into the extent of the breach. It is not immediately clear how many users were affected. The company says its online system has been taken offline and all users' passwords have been reset. The security breach comes after Sony and Nintendo suffered similar attacks by hackers. Millions of computer game users had their data stolen in those attacks. |
| FTC lets Microsoft proceed with purchase of Skype (AP) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 04:02 PM PDT The Federal Trade Commission is letting software giant Microsoft Corp. proceed with its largest deal ever, an $8.5 billion bid for web chat and call service Skype. The FTC announced Friday that it had finished its review of the buyout so it can proceed if the Department of Justice also approves. Both agencies must review any deal worth more than $65.2 million, according to the FTC's website. Microsoft already has a Skype-like service called Windows Live. But Skype lets users of different kinds of computers and phones chat directly. The deal could let Microsoft sell more digital advertising and offer more popular business conferencing tools. Microsoft's bid is more than three times Skype's value 18 months ago when eBay Inc. sold a two-thirds stake to private equity firm Silver Lake. |
| The History of Email [INFOGRAPHIC] (Mashable) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 07:35 PM PDT Email, you've come a long way, baby. In its 40-year tenure as a form of communication, email has run its course from the domain of über nerdy computer scientists to one of the most common ways to keep in touch, both personally and professionally. [More from Mashable: Could Game Mechanics Turn Work Into Play? [INFOGRAPHIC]] Although email as a mode of communication was around for ten years before the term "email" was actually coined, we now count on it in our daily lives. In fact, the use of email has become so pervasive that the Oxford English Dictionary recently added a slew of email acronyms to its official canon. And finally, just this year, the AP Stylebook, a.k.a. the holy book of all (or most) journalists, amended the spelling of e-mail to email, allowing articles such as this one to save bigtime on hyphens. [More from Mashable: Exclusive: Who Won The E3 Buzz Battle? [INFOGRAPHIC]]
To give you a timeline of email's progress through the decades, here's a commemorative 40th anniversary infographic from email delivery company Reachmail. Click image to see larger version. This story originally published on Mashable here. |
| Clinic tries to wean addicts off Internet fix (AFP) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 08:43 PM PDT GONGJU, South Korea (AFP) – Choi Hyun-Min loses all track of time when he sits down to play computer games, but the sessions usually last at least 10 hours. Choi (not his real name) is among hundreds of thousands officially considered to be Internet addicts in South Korea, one of the world's most wired nations. Now the 16-year-old student is undergoing therapy at the "Save Brain Clinic", which opened in early May and styles itself as the country's first specialist clinic for such addicts. "Internet addiction is not mere delinquency," said Lee Jaewon, who heads the clinic at Gongju National Hospital, a psychiatric institution 120 km (74 miles) south of Seoul. "It is a serious issue and parents need to feel less embarrassed and bring children to hospitals for treatment before it's too late." The clinic offers a five-week treatment programme including group sessions, art therapy, medicine and processes known as neurofeedback and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Neurofeedback uses real-time displays to illustrate brain activity, measured through scalp sensors, with the aim of controlling central nervous system activity. Transcranial magnetic stimulation uses magnetic fields to stimulate nerve cells in the brain and is more commonly employed to treat depression. Before treatment starts, the hospital provides a diagnosis through a survey, a brain image scan and psychological tests. "Both tests and treatment programmes are scientific and to a certain extent proven effective," Lee told AFP. The test and treatment fee is 630,000 won (585 dollars) with government insurance coverage, and up to 1,940,000 won without. Many parents have made inquiries. But only three people, including Choi, began the five-week course, which intends to focus on adolescents but is also open to adults. Lee said parents have difficulty admitting their children have problems and feel embarrassed to bring them to a mental hospital. Although Internet addiction is not accepted as a mental disorder, he said, the problem is already deep-rooted in South Korean society. "Playing online games is fun, thrilling and comforting at the same time," Choi, clad in a hospital gown, told AFP. "All I think about is how to play without being interrupted." His addiction began around age nine. Once, he said, he punched a hole in the window of his parents' room to retrieve a computer monitor which they had locked away. He had also stolen money to play at Internet cafes for hours, snacking on instant cup noodles. Early last year, Lee said, a 31-year old man was brought to the hospital by his parents after playing games in an Internet cafe for 780 hours excluding short breaks. There have also been several fatal incidents. Last year a mother was arrested for killing her three-year-old son while she was tired from Internet game-playing. A 15-year-old boy committed suicide after killing his mother for scolding him over excessive playing of computer games. In an especially tragic case, a 41-year-old man was sentenced to two years in prison after he and his wife left their baby daughter to die at home of malnutrition while they were in Internet cafes. They were raising a "virtual child" in an online game. Figures from the family ministry estimate there are two million Internet addicts in a nation of 48.6 million. Among them, 877,000 are aged between nine and 19. Despite strong opposition from the computer games industry, parliament passed a bill forcing online game companies to block users aged under 16 from playing between midnight and 6.00 am. It goes into force this November. While the government ponders policies to prevent Internet addiction, Lee said his clinic will focus on treatment as early as possible. "It will be too late if we only start treatment after Internet addiction has been acknowledged as a mental disease," he said. "We will start now, hoping more medical effort and attention will be given to the issue." |
| Sega attacked, hacker group offers to take revenge (Reuters) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 03:16 PM PDT BOSTON (Reuters) – Japan's Sega Corp joined the rapidly growing club of video game companies whose computer systems have been hacked by cyber criminals, the company said on Friday. The news capped a week in which the Lulz Security group of hackers launched a cyber crime spree against other video game companies. In an unexpected twist, Lulz responded to the news of the attack on Sega by offering to track down and punish the hackers who attacked the Japanese maker of video game software. The drama surrounding the recent round of video game breaches paled compared to what PlayStation maker Sony Corp experienced following two high-profile attacks that surfaced in April. Those breaches led to the theft of account data for more than 100 million customers, making it the largest ever hacking of data outside the financial services industry. They also exposed what turned out to be a large number of security holes in sites throughout the global Sony media empire. That led to a rash of attacks on Sony systems that undermined confidence in the company and made it the source of frequent jokes by security experts. Its security staff scrambled to repair vulnerabilities in its network as independent experts identified new problems via remote scans and disclosed them to Sony and the public. Sega said that some personal information about an unspecified number of Sega Pass online network members had been compromised in the attack, according to a letter the company sent to customers on Friday that was published on the PlayStation LifeStyle.net website. Customer email addresses and birthdates, which can be read in plain text were taken, as were passwords, which could not be read in plain text because they had been scrambled or encrypted using security software before being stored in the database. Sega shut down the Pass network on Thursday, the day it learned of the breach, telling customers in a note on its website that it was "undergoing improvements." It was not immediately clear when it would go back online. The video game developer is a division of Japan's Sega Sammy Holdings, which makes game software such as Sonic the Hedgehog as well as slot machines. Sega was one of the biggest video game consoles makers in the 1990s, but pulled out of the market in 2001 in response to disappointing sales of its Dreamcast system, which had debuted in 1998 to widespread industry praise. Dreamcast lost ground to newer products developed by Sony and Nintendo. It now focuses on developing video games for systems made by other companies. LULZ GETS INVOLVED While the FBI is likely to be called in to investigate the attack on Sega, as the bureau typically is in such cases, its agents may find themselves competing for clues with members of Lulz Security hacking group. In its offer to assist Sega, the Tweet from Lulz hinted that its leaders might count themselves among a small but highly loyal group of gamers who still play on the aging Dreamcast console. "Sega - contact us," Lulz said in its Tweet to the video game developer. "We want to help you destroy the hackers that attacked you. We love the Dreamcast, these people are going down." Lulz offered to see that the cyber criminals are punished for attacking Sega shortly after ending its own crime spree that included attacks on several other video game companies. The Lulz hackers, who publicize their attacks on their own website and via Twitter, said on Friday that they had stolen customer records of some 200,000 users of the online video game Brink. Officials at Xenia Media, the developer of Brink, could not be reached for comment. Lulz last week also attacked several other industry players, saying it was working on behalf of disgruntled players who had ordered the attacks via telephone hotlines that Lulz set up in the United States and Europe to solicit such requests. Tribalware.net and EVE from Innogames were among the victims of the Lulz campaign against video game makers. The hacking group also attacked servers that help run two other online games -- "League of Legends" and "Minecraft" -- and it hit the The Escapist website, which provides video game news. Lulz had hacked into Nintendo in an attack that it disclosed on June 3, but the incident has not appeared to have serious consequences for the company. The hacking group published a data file over the Internet that it said contained details on the way Nintendo set up one of its web servers. Such data could be valuable to other hackers planning future attacks on Nintendo because the data potentially could leave clues as to possible security weaknesses in the game maker's network. (Reporting by Jim Finkle; Editing by Eric Walsh) |
| Why Android Tablets Fail (ContributorNetwork) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 12:10 PM PDT Contribute content like this. Start here. I don't mean "fail" as in "perform badly." In a world where Google's Android operating system powered the only "tablet" devices, they'd be magical and best-selling. But this is not that world. The iPad is the elephant in the room, and it dominates both buyers' and app developers' preferences. By "fail," what I mean is that they're failures in the marketplace. The first "real" Android tablet to sell, the Xoom, was basically a flop. And the only one to make headlines or sell out these days is the Asus Transformer, which (perhaps not coincidentally) is also the cheapest Android tablet, at $399. You probably already know the differences between the various tablets; how Android tablets have roughly equal specs to the iPad, and usually have some feature or another that it lacks, but don't have its 65,000 apps. This isn't about those differences. What it is about, is what the "tablet market" is like, and which markets it isn't like. Confused? Let me explain. A tale of two markets Okay, imagine a market that's divided into two segments. One is an exclusive, super-profitable, high-end segment that's basically owned by one company. The other is the much larger low end, where the products are commodity items that compete with each other on price. Whether you're thinking that sounds like the smartphone market or the home computer market, you're right. Unlike the Mac, the iPhone had a head start, which gave it the lead in both quality and quantity for a while. Android phones combined have recently caught up to the iPhone in terms of market share, but Apple still dominates in profits, much like it does in the home computer market. This is the market a lot of people seem to think the "tablet market" either is, or will become. Personally, though, having lived through (and watched) the game console boom of the '90s, I think that it's more like that market. Start the Wayback Machine In the early-to-mid '90s, Nintendo and Sega were selling some popular name-brand products, the Super NES and the Genesis (or Mega Drive outside North America). These game consoles were middling expensive gadgets that were basically toys, but were selling like hotcakes to people who wanted one. Other companies saw this booming "game console market" and thought, "I've gotta get me some of that." But even companies that were successful in other markets failed to make a dent. Remember the Apple Pippin? No? Well, neither does almost anyone else. Not until Sony's PlayStation did anyone else get their foot in the door, and Sony had enormous price and technology advantages on its side. So, to recap: We have a "market" that consists of a powerful, name-brand product that people ask for by name, that is designed to run games (or apps) that work on it and nothing else. And on the other hand, we have third-party wannabes that play hardly any games (or apps), and that may have some kind of technological gimmick but often cost more and are harder to find. Sound familiar? The tablet makers' dilemma The problem for companies like Samsung and Motorola is that they can't just enter the "tablet market" on a lark, the way Philips built the CD-i. They have to make tablets, because the iPad has shown them that that's where the future is. It's eating away PC hardware sales, and everyone who tries one loves it. Can Android tablet makers succeed at this gamble? I think it's more likely that someone will come out of left field and surprise us. Like Barnes and Noble ... or Amazon.com. Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008. |
| How BlueStacks will make Android apps work on Windows PCs (Appolicious) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 09:00 AM PDT |
| Google's 'Photovine' trademark sparks photo-sharing rumors (Digital Trends) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 02:11 PM PDT
Google has trademarked the name "Photovine," and possibly acquired the domain photovine.com, reports show. Evidence surrounding the move suggests that the search giant is, once again, about to dip its toes into the social media realm, this time with a focus on photo-sharing. Google's application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for the "Photovine" trademark was first noticed by Fusible. The site also discovered that the photovine.com domain is registered with Mark Monitor, a registrar Google uses for many of its domains, including google.com. According to the trademark filing, "Photovine" will be used for a "communication services, namely, transmission of visual images and data by telecommunications networks, wireless communication networks, the Internet, information services networks and data networks." It is also related to "non-downloadable computer software" and "on-line social networking services." While the trademark application explicitly states the purpose of "Photovine," what Google actually plans to do with the service remains unknown. (The company has not yet responded to our request for comment on the matter.) Google already owns and operates a photo-sharing service in the form of Picasa Web. So we presume that Photovine would be more in the vein of mobile services like Instagram. If this is the case, Photovine would put Google in direct competition with Facebook, which, according to recent reports, has its own photo-sharing app in the works. The photo-sharing space is already a crowded one — it seems as though a new option pops out of nowhere every week. And with Google's dismal track record on social networking, we're not so sure they should waste their time trying to launch another. But as our teachers have always said: If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Check out our guide to finding the perfect photo-sharing platform here. |
| Sun Has Giant Supersonic Waves Bigger Than Earth (SPACE.com) Posted: 17 Jun 2011 11:14 PM PDT Humongous waves of hot plasma roiling on the surface of the sun appear to be moving at speeds as high as 4.5 million miles per hour, a new study found. The waves are so huge it would take up to 16 Earths, end-to-end, to match them. It's the first unambiguous evidence that the sun's lower atmosphere contains such superfast "magnetosonic waves," scientists said. The fast waves have velocities of 2.3 million to 4.5 million mph (1,000 to 2,000 kilometers per second), periods in the range of 30 to 200 seconds, and wavelengths of 62,000 to 124,000 miles (100,000 to 200,000 kilometers), equivalent to stacking between eight to 16 Earths on top of one another. [Amazing New Sun Photos from Space] Scientists discovered the waves with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), dedicated to observing the sun from orbit around Earth. Ripples in a pond Waves on the sun are produced when a flare or eruption on the solar surface kicks up hot plasma, similar to ripples in water produced when a rock is dropped into a still pond. Scientists have observed slow-moving waves on the sun, but fast-moving waves, which were also predicted by theory, had so far gone undetected because previous space telescopes could not take pictures rapidly enough to image these fast waves. [Video: Enormous Surfer Waves on Sun Hotter Than Hell] "They seem to be a common phenomenon," said Karel Schrijver, principal physicist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif., in a statement."During the first year of the SDO mission, despite the sun being relatively quiet, we have seen about a dozen such waves. Although their exact trigger mechanism is currently under investigation, they appear to be intimately related to flares that sometimes exhibit pulsations at similar frequencies." Enigmatic processes Waves such as these are believed to be responsible for many fundamental, yet enigmatic processes on the sun, such as heating the corona to millions of degrees, accelerating the solar wind, triggering remote eruptions, and delivering energy and information between different parts of the atmosphere. By observing these waves, scientists hope to better understand the solar physics of such processes and their consequences on near-Earth space and the terrestrial environment. "This discovery and analysis is very significant because we are witnessing phenomena of which we were previously unaware," said Alan Title, principal investigator of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly at the Lockheed Martin lab, who first noticed the fast propagating waves in routine SDO movies."In light of this discovery, the more we look at solar flares, the more of these waves we see, and as observation and analysis lead to insight, the better we will understand the processes involved." Stanford University scientist Wei Liu, a research associate at the Lockheed Martin laboratory, presented the findings today (June 15) at the annual meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society in Las Cruces, N.M. The researchers also detail their discovery in a paper to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Surfer waves on the sun? Another recent study of waves on the sun found "surfer" waves the size of the United States in the solar corona. These so-called Kelvin-Helmholtz waves, also discovered using data from SDO, could help astronomers understand how energy moves through the solar atmosphere. "One of the biggest questions about the solar corona is the heating mechanism," said solar physicist Leon Ofman of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and Catholic University, Washington. "The corona is a thousand times hotter than the sun's visible surface, but what heats it up is not well-understood. People have suggested that waves like this might cause turbulence which cause heating, but now we have direct evidence of Kelvin-Helmholtz waves." That research was published online on May 19 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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| How SavingStar pays users to shop for groceries with iPhone and Android apps (Appolicious) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 06:00 AM PDT |
| 2012 Audi A7 Review (Digital Trends) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 05:45 AM PDT
It all started with a moment of road rage. Sure, I was focusing too much on browsing my iPhone's vast music collection and driving a hair slow, but some guy in a broken-down pick-up accelerated up to the bumper of the 2012 Audi A7 I'm reviewing, honked his horn and flipped me the bird. Yes, we are living in a down economy, and granted this particular model costs about $60,000, but — dude, I'm just a car tester. Don't hold that against me. After a few seconds, I glided to the shoulder and smiled as he chugged away with one last salute. The panic moment would have been much more severe if I was making the payments on this roadster: a low-slung, medium-gray sedan that shares more than a passing resemblance to recent luxury models from Jaguar. Interestingly, the all-new A7 shares many of the same features of the A8 we reviewed a few months ago, yet has a distinctly different purpose in life. The A8 uses some of the most advanced technology available to ease you around corners using an adaptive suspension and make potholes much less infuriating, in addition to a host of other creature comforts like front speakers that rise out of the dashboard. The Audi A7 is more focused on the thrill of driving. The intent here is luxury, speed, and a sporty drive for every condition. First, a note about the styling. This sedan is roughly 55 inches tall, which you'll notice right away. Like the Jaguar, the car looks longer than the A8 because of its low profile, but seating is actually a bit less spacious — especially in the back. Headroom for the driver is okay — fortunately, you can adjust the seat quite low. The sunroof, which normally lowers the overall cab space for tall drivers, actually adds some extra room as long as you keep the cover open. Driving the 2012 Audi A7 is an experience every car lover should have at least once. The acceleration is not exactly like a sportscar — not too long ago, we drove the 2012 Ford Mustang 302 Boss and still remember the tire squeal. Yet, like most European sedans, you will appreciate the initial punch and the passing ability in third and fourth gear. It's a little astounding on the A7 — once you are up to about 60MPH on the highway — that there is still so much power available, even though the V6 engine has just over 300 horsepower and is not in the same league as, say, the Cadillac CTS-V. (Next week, we're reviewing the new Camaro SS Convertible pony car that has over 400 horsepower.) The engine whir on the A7 makes you appreciate the engineering that went into this redesign, as the vehicle passes through the upper gears and you barely notice the automatic shifting. Of course, you can also use a manual shift mode, which is easy to access on the floor-mounted shifter. The A7 allows you to switch between drive modes, such as comfort and dynamic, to control whether the shifting is smooth or provides a bit more punch. The A7 model we tested is the turbocharged version, which adds some quick acceleration — about 6 seconds going from 0 to 60. The interior of our A7 looked luxurious but not over-stated. There's a spider-web pattern on some panels that adds some extra flare, but we still prefer the cockpit of the Infiniti M37x in terms of overall styling.
Technology perksAudi has not made any radical new advancements in terms of tech features on the A7. There is a version that includes pedestrian detection — basically, the car will stop automatically if someone is foolish to jump in front of you. The detection shows the person in the HUD right above the steering wheel. On our A7, there were a few interesting tech extras. One is that the rain-sensing wipers actually work — during a storm, they would start slowly and then work faster as the rain picked up. Many newer models, including most Buicks, have rain sensors, but they sometimes get fooled. (Extra trivia note: Rain sensors use a camera that measures optical interference to turn on the wipers.)Adding Google Earth to the A7 is a remarkable new enhancement. In the slide-up 8-inch LCD viewer, which you control with a knob near the flour-mounted shifter (it's not touch enabled), you can enable Google Earth to see a satellite rendering of your surroundings. In major cities, you'll see buildings and other points-of-interest. This way, you can inspect your destination and even find a parking garage or front entrance. One option in the system allows you to quickly see the destination, and there's a touchpad near the shifter that you can use to move around the map. The nav interface also allows you to view Panoramia photos linked to a destination, so you can see photos from other users that are relative to your current location, along the route, or at the destination. The car has a T-Mobile 3G connection for pulling in this data, and you can tap into the 3G using your phone, a tablet, or a laptop over the built-in Audi Connect Wi-Fi hotspot. Unfortunately, by choosing T-Mobile, the coverage in our area was skimpy at best, and we never did get anything more than a 2G connection, even though AT&T and Sprint both have readily available 3G. Navigating on the A7 is a notch better than most luxury cars. For one thing, the voice controls actually work. You can speak a city name and the A7 recognizes what you are saying and offers to make that the destination. The voice used for turn-by-turn navigation sounds a bit too much like a nerdy school principal for our tastes. In comparing the A7 sound system to the A8, we found that the audio clarity is actually similar, and the subwoofer in the A7 thumped louder, but we didn't feel quite as enveloped in sound. In fact, the A7 sound system from Bose was not exactly an overall highlight, even if it still beats many of the sedans we've tested from American car makers. The BMW 7 series, re-designed Jeep Grand Cherokee, and Audi A8 all sounded better than the A7. Bluetooth, as always in Audi cars, worked flawlessly. We could even switch seamlessly between a Jabra Freeway speakerphone to the built-in speakerphone, both using an iPhone, without any problems. Audio playback also worked perfectly when we used the 30-pin connector located in a compartment between the seats. We did not see a setting to stream Bluetooth audio, however. There's a six-disc CD changer in the glove box, plus the CD/DVD slot in the stereo. Our A7 test car also included satellite radio. Overall, the media options are all top notch. So what's missing? When we say there are no really impressive tech advancements, we mean that the A7 we tested had no adaptive cruise control for adjusting speed automatically based on the car in front of you. It has no lane departure warning, and no extra enhancements we have not seen in other luxury cars. The A7 does have sensors for warning you about objects nearby, blind spot detectors, and a crisp back-up camera that worked well even in rainy conditions. There's another interesting perk: a switch for raising and lowering the rear spoiler. The LED lighting in the front and rear is also a good safety addition — it means you can see much better at night both for highway driving and for backing up in the driveway. Two switches for rear-seat control allow you to disable not only the windows but the doors for kids in the back. One other oddity: the A7 we drove is actually a hatchback in that, when you open the trunk, the rear area opens up. This means you could conceivably haul a few 2 x 4 boards around or a really long pole. Whether you'd want to do that in a car suited for business use is debatable. One other note: The A7 uses the latest Audio Quattro AWD and matched the handing of the A8. The only difference we noted, since we drove the A7 on loose mud instead of heavier snow, is that the A8 seemed a bit more secure on a slippery road than the A7 in tight situations, such as a few quick steering adjustments. You might wonder where the A7 fits compared to previous car tests. That's a tough one to explain, because the new A7 is an anomaly. It has luxury car roots, being the second-best model in the Audi line-up. Yet, it has a sports car heart, where you feel more inclined to drive fast than to cruise around a lake in summer. Our road rage incident made us wonder if the styling is a little over the top — the car definitely sticks out in a crowd. It's easy to mistake it for a Jaguar, especially considering how the Audi A8 has a purposefully understated business-car design.
ConclusionIn the end, we felt the A7 will be just as hard to give up driving as the A8. There's a pang of "no more quick accelerations from every stop sign" and "no more easy phone connectivity" after testing the A7. We still prefer the M37x interior, the BMW 7 sound system, and the Volvo S60′s high-tech features. We also wonder if the upcoming Mercedes-Benz CLS leap-frogs right past the A7 and the A8. But the A7 beats all previous tests in terms of spirited driving, especially around corners. Only the A8 is a clearly superior car in every way. |
| New Apple iPad 2 Ad: 'Now, There's This' (PC Magazine) Posted: 18 Jun 2011 08:40 AM PDT Apple has debuted a new ad for its popular iPad 2, touting things that Cupertino said wasn't possible before its tablet. The ad, titled "Now," highlights the versatile nature of iPad apps. "Now, you can watch a newspaper," a voiceover says, zooming in on someone flipping through the Wall Street Journal app. "Now you can listen to a magazine," the voice says, switching to an interactive "Fantastic Mr. Fox" feature from Spin magazine. The ad also flashes to someone watching "The King's Speech," video chatting via FaceTime, and taking an online class. "Hold an entire bookstore [via iBooks] and touch the stars," the ad concludes, flashing to an astronomy app, "because now, there's this." This, of course, is the iPad 2, and the commercial ends with a shot of the updated tablet sitting on a table, presumably waiting for you to dole out hundreds of dollars for the pleasure of its company. The "Now" ad comes about a month after the last commercial, which discussed the iPad 2's various uses and how its fans perceive it. "If you ask a parent, they might call it intuitive," a voice said, flashing to a Smart Cover-enhanced iPad 2 displaying photos from a family trip to Yosemite. "If you ask a musician, they might call it inspiring," it continued, showing the iPad 2 in a music studio utilizing GarageBand. The first iPad 2 commercial made its debut in early April. Entitled "We Believe," it was more serious than most other Apple ads, hitting sentimental notes—both literally and figuratively—and focusing almost entirely on ease of use. During a recent earnings call, Apple said it sold 4.69 million iPads in the last quarter, a steep decline from the 7.33 million iPads the company sold during the fourth quarter holiday sales season. Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook, however, said at the time that Apple was facing the "mother of all backlogs" regarding the iPad 2. March commercials for the iPhone, meanwhile, used the subtle tagline: "If you don't have an iPhone, you don't have an iPhone." |
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