Galaxy Announced Golden Android Flip Phone

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Samsung seems to have hitched a ride on the new-age retro bandwagon with its release of two flip phone/smartphone hybrids. 

The Samsung Hennessy flip phone was released last week for the Chinese market and one week later the tech giant announced a second flip phone/smartphone hybrid: the Samsung Galaxy Golden. Both the Hennessy and the Galaxy Golden are dual-screen phones that run on the Android operating system. The Galaxy Golden runs on Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and features two 3.7 inch Super AMOLED touch screens. The two screens are mounted back-to-back allowing you access the smartphone screen in both the closed and open positions the flip phone has to offer. 

Despite the Galaxy tag on the Golden, the flip phone hybrid is not on the same level as the Samsung Galaxy flagship phones in terms of specifications. The internal hardware on the Golden includes a dual-core 1.7GHz processor, an 8 megapixel camera, and LTE support. Like Samsung's other smartphones, the Golden does come with an "Easy Mode" for those new to the smartphone market. The Golden, not surprisingly, comes in a champagne gold color. The hybrid phone also features a pedometer, an FM radio, and Samsung's S Health application. The Samsung Galaxy Golden will most likely not hit shelves in the United States, similar to the China-bound Hennessy, but is expected to go on sale through South Korean carriers for the South Korean equivalent of $700, which is 790,000 Korean won. 

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Run Linux Software on Windows 5 Ways to so

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Linux users often want to run Windows software on Linux, but Windows users may want to run Linux software, too. Whether you’re looking for a better development environment or powerful command-line tools, you can run Linux software without leaving Windows.

There are many different options for running Linux software on Windows. It’s easier than running Windows software on Linux, as anyone can set up a virtual machine with a free Linux distribution — no need for software licenses.

Virtual Machines

Virtual machines allow you to run any operating system in a window on your desktop. You can install the free VirtualBox or VMware Player, download an ISO file for a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu, and install that Linux distribution inside the virtual machine like you would install it on a standard computer.

When you need to boot up your Linux system, you can do it in a window on your desktop — no need for rebooting and leaving all your Windows programs behind. Everything but demanding games and advanced 3D effects should work just fine, but you likely won’t want to use those, anyway.

If you’re installing Ubuntu in a virtual machine, you may want to try installing an Ubuntu derivative like Xubuntu instead. Ubuntu’s default Unity desktop uses 3D effects and the desktop interface doesn’t perform as smoothly in a virtual machine as past desktops did. Xubuntu uses Xfce, which is much more lightweight.

You could even try using VirtualBox’s seamless mode or VMware’s unity mode to run Linux applications directly on your desktop — they’ll be running in the virtual machine, but their windows will be present on your Windows desktop instead of trapped in a single virtual machine window.

Cygwin

Cygwin is a collection of tools that offer a Linux-like environment on Windows. It’s not a way to run existing Linux software on Windows — the software will have to be recompiled. However, much software has already been recompiled. Cygwin will give you a Linux-like terminal and command-line environment with many of the command-line programs you may already be used to.

We’ve previously covered installing and using Cygwin. You can even use Cygwin to install an OpenSSH server and get SSH access to a Windows system.

This solution is ideal for users missing crucial Linux utilities on Windows — it’s not a way to run a full Linux desktop.

Install Ubuntu via Wubi

This method is technically installing Linux, not running Linux software on Windows. You’ll have to reboot each time you want to use your Linux system just as if you had installed it in a standard dual-boot configuration.

However, Wubi doesn’t install Ubuntu in the normal way. Instead, it creates a special file on your Windows partition and uses that file as your Ubuntu drive. This means that you can install Ubuntu and use it without any partitioning and you can uninstall Ubuntu from the Windows Control Panel when you’re done.

If the partitioning aspects are what’s holding you back, give Wubi a try. Performance won’t be quite as good as a normally installed Linux system when it comes to disk read and write times, but it should be faster than a virtual machine.

Ported and Compiled Programs

Many common Linux programs have already been ported to Windows and compiled versions have been made available online. If you really miss Emacs, you’ll find versions of Emacs for Windows. If you want to run a specific program on Windows, perform a Google search for the name of that program and “Windows” — there’s a good chance you’ll find a version of the program that ‘s been ported to Windows.

coLinux-based Distributions

coLinux stands for Cooperative Linux. It’s a way to natively run Linux alongside the Windows kernel in a way that offers much faster performance than simply running Linux in a virtual machine.

This is a great idea, but there’s a problem. coLinux doesn’t yet support 64-bit versions of Windows, so you’ll need to be running a 32-bit version of Windows on your machine to do this — that’s increasingly rare. coLinux hasn’t released a new version in over two years, so development seems to be either stalled or moving very slowly.

If you want to try this out, you may want to try out Portable Ubuntu Remix. This coLinux-based distribution was last updated in 2011, so it’s a bit old — but other options like andLinux are even more out of date. andLinux, which we’ve covered in the past, was last updated in 2009.

coLinux-based distributions would be a great option, but they seem to be getting left behind. If you don’t mind using years-old Linux software and a 32-bit version of Windows, this option may work for you anyway.

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There’s no one right option here. People who want a full Linux experience will probably want a virtual machine, while users of a few crucial shell utilities may prefer Cygwin. Others who just want to run a single program may find better luck with a version of that program ported to Windows.

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Sending Text Messages From Your PC With Your Android Phone

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You’re sitting at your PC and you receive a text message, so you pick up your phone, unlock it, read the message on the small screen, and type one back using the touchscreen keyboard. Why not use your PC instead?

If you’re already sitting at your computer, you can take advantage of your computer’s keyboard to send and receive text messages. The utilities here are primarily for Android phones — Apple doesn’t allow developers to do this with iPhones.

If you’re in the US, you can also do this with Google Voice using any type of phone — see below for more information.

MightyText

MightyText offers an Android app that you can install on your phone. After linking the app with your phone’s Google account, you can log into MightyText from any browser using the same Google account. There’s also a Chrome extension that alerts you to new text messages as they come in.The MightyText website allows you to send and receive text messages via your browser. Text messages will be sent via MightyText to the MightyText app on your phone, where they’re sent out of the network as standard text messages. MightyText will also capture incoming text messages, forwarding them to the MightyText web app.

This means you can install an app on your phone and then use your browser to send and receive text messages. It’s a slick, polished solution for texting from Android phones via your browser.

AirDroid

Install the AirDroid app on your Android device and it will function as a local web server. You can then access AirDroid in a browser if you’re on the same local network as your phone. AirDroid provides a variety of ways to interact with your device — downloading and uploading files from your browser, managing your installed apps, and even sending and receiving text messages.

Just install the app on your phone, launch it, type your phone’s address in your browser, accept the connection, and click the Messages icon on the AirDroid page. You’ll be able to view and send text messages via your browser from the comfort of your keyboard.

AirDroid doesn’t require any accounts or other setup — it’s capable of functioning entirely locally without any third-party servers involved. As a result of this, you will need to re-establish the connection in your browser when you take your phone and laptop onto a different Wi-Fi network. AirDroid does a lot of things — it can do more than MightyText, but MightyText feels much more optimized for sending and receiving text messages.

Google Voice (US Only)

Google Voice isn’t an Android-only solution. If you’re in the USA, you can get a free Google Voice number and use Google Voice with any phone — even landline ones. Google Voice can function a your main phone number, allowing you to forward incoming calls and texts to other numbers.

Google Voice also allows you to send and receive text messages via your browser from the Google Voice website. You can also install the Google Voice Chrome extension to send and receive text messages from your browser’s toolbar.

Best of all, Google Voice is entirely free to sign up for. Sending text messages with Google Voice is also completely free, while you may be charged by your carrier to send text messages if you use the above services — this depends on what your carrier charges you for text messages.

If you live in the USA and are willing to sign up for Google Voice, it’s a great option. Best of all, it can be used by anyone, even people who don’t even own a cellphone. Everyone can use the Google Voice website. Apple’s iPhone has an official Google Voice app you can use, while Windows Phone users will have to look for third-party Google Voice apps.

You could also try using a messaging service that replaces text messages, allowing you to send messages for free — some such services offer desktop apps, too.

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Iphone new iwatch phone photos

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Preventing People From Viewing Your Browser’s Saved Passwords

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Have you ever saved a password in your browser — Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, or another one? Then your passwords are likely viewable by anyone with access to your computer while you’re logged in.

Chrome and Firefox’s developers think this is fine, as you should be preventing people from accessing your computer in the first place, but this will likely come as a surprise to many people.

How Anyone With Access To Your Computer Can View Your Passwords

Assuming you leave your computer logged in and someone else uses it, they can open Chrome’s Settings page, go to the Passwords section, and easily view every single password you have saved.

You can plug chrome://settings/passwords into Chrome’s address bar for easy access to this page. Click a password field and click the Show button — you can see any password saved in Chrome with no additional prompts.

With Firefox’s default settings, you can open its Options window, select the Security pane, and click the Saved Passwords button. Select Show Passwords and you can see a list of all the passwords saved in Firefox on your computer.

Firefox allows you to set a “master password” that must be entered before you can view or use saved passwords, but this is disabled by default and Firefox doesn’t prompt users to set one up.

Internet Explorer provides no built-in way to view its saved passwords. However, this apparent security is misleading. With a utility like the free IE PassView, you can view all saved IE passwords for the current user account. You can also view passwords without installing any software — just visit a website where the password is automatically filled and use something like the Reveal Passwords bookmarklet to reveal the password that was automatically entered.

What’s Going On Here? Is This a Security Vulnerability?

There has been a debate raging among geeks as to whether this is really a security vulnerability. Should Chrome’s developers (and the developers of other browsers, like Internet Explorer and even Firefox with its default settings) change this behavior? Have users been betrayed by developers, given that browsers don’t warn users about this behavior?

On the one hand, there are some good arguments for the current behavior.

• Chrome and Internet Explorer both secure your saved passwords with your Windows user account password. If you’re not logged in, your passwords are inaccessible. If an attacker changes your Windows account password, your passwords become inaccessible. Assuming you use a strong Windows password and lock your computer when you aren’t using it, you’re theoretically secure.
• If an attacker has physical access to your computer or a malicious program is running in the background, it could log your key strokes and gain any “master password” used to secure your passwords in Firefox or a dedicated password manager like LastPass. A master password in Chrome would provide a false sense of security.
• A master password is an additional security method that would inconvenience average users, who would opt to disable it anyway. Users wouldn’t want to have to enter a master password before using their saved passwords.
• If your browser was already logged into an account on a website, the attacker could gain access to your account on that website if they have access to your browser.

On the other hand, users don’t follow perfect security practices in the real world:

• Many people share Windows user accounts, set their computers to automatically log in, or let guests use their computers without looking over their shoulder the whole time. This makes accessing saved passwords trivial. Anyone even remotely curious could glance at the passwords.
• A master password would allow users to further secure their password database, allowing them to save passwords without worrying about guests using their computer and being tempted to glance at them.
• Many Windows user account passwords are extremely weak, so the passwords would have little protection. Many people also don’t lock their computers every time they step away.
• Chrome provides multiple user profiles, encouraging users to share Chrome profiles on a single user account, but provides no method of isolating these profiles and preventing other Chrome user profiles from accessing other account passwords
• If an attacker gained access to an already-logged-in website but didn’t have your password, they wouldn’t be capable of changing your password or deleting your account.
• Average users probably expect that their passwords are harder to view. There’s no warning informing them that anyone with access to their computers can view their saved passwords, or that they should set a strong Windows password and lock their computers when they step away from them.

So which side is right? Well, Chrome does secure your password if you follow ideal security procedures. That said, Chrome (and IE and Firefox in its default configuration) also doesn’t provide enough information to users about what it’s doing. In the real world, a master password could be useful to many people.

How to Protect Your Saved Passwords

If you’re worried about your saved passwords, here are some tips you can use to secure them from prying eyes:

• Use a dedicated password manager, like LastPass. These password managers work with every browser and provide a master password that locks access to your passwords when you’re logged out. Chrome’s developers might not want to give you the master password feature, but you can add it yourself by using LastPass in the place of Chrome’s default password manager. It’s an all-around more powerful option, as are other password managers like KeePass.

• If you use Firefox, enable the master password feature. This is off by default because Firefox’s developers don’t like the user experience, but a master password allows you to “lock” your password database with a single main password. You can then share your user account with other people and they won’t be able to glance at your passwords. Sure, they could install a key logger while you aren’t looking, but many people who might be tempted to peek at your passwords wouldn’t want to go all the way with a key logger. This is why we lock our doors — the locks aren’t perfect, but they keep honest people honest.

• If you use Chrome or Internet Explorer and want to keep using the built-in password manager, ensure you exercise good security practices. Set a strong Windows user account password and lock your computer whenever you step away from it. Someone with access to your computer while it’s logged in could quickly glance at your passwords — especially with Chrome.

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Ferrari Technology

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Technology is evolving at a fast pace to drive man’s emotions to strive for more agronomic design and comfort. That’s why a “World Design Contest” has been organized in the Maranello, Italy in July, 2011 to exhibit the prototype of V8 engine production line.

Ferrari V8 engines used for FXX Enzo cars which built on a single crankshaft to deliver more acceleration and balance during the drive. Ferrari Enzo FXX is a non-street legal version whose test drive facility provide to limited credible clients. The Enzo FXX costs around $1.8 million and around 3 to 6 units produced every year.

The company provides the full renovation and restoration facilities in the Classiche garage where the vintage cars transform into modern one’s. The re-manufactured parts of cars stack with proper Ferrari seal that depicts each replaced part belongs to Ferrari factory.

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How to Quickly Check If Your Computer Can Run a PC Game

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PC gaming isn’t quite as simple as console gaming. If you have a laptop with weak graphics hardware or an older PC, it’s important to check whether your computer can support a game before you spend your hard-earned cash.

Gamers don’t have to upgrade their hardware as often as they used to. Even a gaming PC built years ago should be able to handle the newest games just fine. Laptops not build for gaming and older PCs are a different matter.

Beware Intel Graphics

First, one big warning: If your computer uses onboard Intel graphics instead of dedicated NVIDIA or AMD graphics hardware, you’ll likely experience issues running newer, graphically demanding games.

Most laptops include Intel on-board graphics, which is cheaper and doesn’t use as much power. However, even the latest Intel graphics hardware is much slower than NVIDIA or AMD graphics. If you only have Intel graphics, you may not even be able to play the newest games on the lowest graphics settings.

Intel’s onboard graphics performance has improved with Intel’s new Haswell graphics, but it hasn’t improved nearly enough. All but the most extremely expensive Haswell chips offer only moderate improvements over the previous generation.

Check Your PC’s Specifications Manually

We’ll cover a more automatic method later on, but first we’ll look at the manual method. You’ll need to know the hardware in your computer — primarily its CPU speed, amount of RAM, and graphics card details. You can find this information in a variety of different ways, including looking up your laptop’s specifications online.

However, it would be easiest to use a system information tool for this. We recommendSpeccy, made by the same company that makes the excellent CCleaner.

Here are the main three things you need to care about:

• The CPU’s speed, in GHz. Click the CPU header in Speccy and you’ll be able to see the number of cores your CPU has, too.
• The amount of RAM your computer has, in GB.
• The model of your computer’s graphics card and the amount of RAM the graphics card has on-board. Also note whether you have NVIDIA or AMD graphics. If you see both Intel and NVIDIA or AMD, that’s fine — your computer has both and switches between the two to save power.

Next, look up the system requirements for the game you want to run. You’ll generally find this information on the game’s website or on the site for whatever store is selling it. It’s at the bottom of each game’s page on the Steam store, for example.

Compare the information shown in Speccy to the details below. Pay particular attention to the processor, memory, and video card requirements.

Once you can remember the basic hardware your computer contains, checking system requirements is as simple as glancing at them and comparing from memory.

Automatically Compare Your PC’s Specifications to a Game

Let’s be honest: this process is inconvenient. Computers should be able to do all of this for us.

To check system requirements automatically, use the Can You Run It? website. This website is endorsed by a variety of big companies, including AMD.

Before using this website, we recommend running the System Requirements Lab Detection desktop app. Install this app and it will scan your computer’s hardware before sending you back to the website, setting a special cookie that identifies your hardware. This way you won’t have to install any Java or any ActiveX applets.

After running the tool, just visit the website, select the game you want to run from the dropdown box, and click the Can You Run It button.

You’ll be informed how well the game will run on your current hardware. You can check as many games as you like in the future — but if you clear your cookies, you’ll have to run the detection tool again.

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But can it run Crysis? Well, that depends on your hardware — with these tools, you’ll be able to figure out the answer!

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Android Surpasses iOS in App Downloads

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While Google's Android platform has been outselling Apple's iOS for downloads for some time now, developers still believe that they are more likely to make a profit from Apple apps. 

A new report from analytics firm App Annie shows that developers are right in that thinking. However, profits come from both platforms, especially if you're making games. According to the report, the Google Play store had 10 percent more app downloads than the Apple Store in the second quarter of 2013. Google may have the numbers, but Apple got the revenue in second quarter of 2012; the App Store generated 2.3 times more revenue than the Google Play store. The report shows that games generated 75 percent of the App Store's revenue and 80 percent of Google Play's revenue despite the fact that the report only accounted for around 40 percent of the downloads from each platform. 

The App Store, according to this report, made nearly $2.1 billion in revenue in the second quarter. According to App Annie's estimates, based on the App Store's revenue, Google Play made about $931 million in the quarter. These are rough calculations, but Apple does have more revenue from its App Store. Between the two platforms, the App Store and Google Play store rack up nearly $3 billion per quarter on the apps market. This information may lead individual developers to move outside of the two main platforms and try a smaller market. 

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