Google takes another stab at the living room with Chromecast

Walking in to the Dogpatch Studios in San Francisco on Wednesday
morning, one of the only objects already propped up on the bare stage
was an HDTV from Samsung.

It became evident that Google taking yet another approach at syncing
up the living room, but the surprise announcement wasn't another
Google TV or even the dead-on-arrival Nexus Q.

Enter the Chromecast.

Measuring in at just two inches in length, Chromecast runs a
"simplified version" of Chrome OS. It plugs into any HDMI input port
and "simply disappears behind your TV."

Essentially, the Chromecast links up other Google products in your
home (Android and Chrome-based) such as smartphones, tablets, and
laptops.

The Chromecast streams the content (i.e. YouTube, Netflix, Google Play
social games, etc.) from the device source via the cloud. The device
(i.e. smartphone) operates as the remote control.

For developers, there is the new Google Cast SDK, which should enable
building upon existing apps and interactions between devices and the
TV through the Chromecast devices.

The developer preview for Android, Chrome and iOS is rolling out today.

The obvious benefits here include the compact form factor and the easy
upgrade in a simple package. That is to say that consumers just need a
TV with HDMI connectivity, and this device should be good-to-go.

Instead of paying hundreds of dollars to upgrade the HDTV itself (at
least for Internet connectivity and related apps), consumers could
save themselves a lot of time, trouble and money with a dongle that
just plugs in.

Compared to the confusing Nexus Q and the expensive Google TV models
that had limited functionality, the Chromecast peripheral is possibly
Google's best attempt at satisfying home entertainment devices yet.

That is, at first glance.

There are a few features still in the infamous beta mode, meaning
users can't expect things to work so seamlessly out of the box.

For example, one function rolling out in beta is the ability to launch
any Chrome tab from a user's laptop to the television via Chromecast.
Based on the live demo, it also appears that there is a bit of a time
delay between the source and the TV's display of Chrome.

Regardless, the Chromecast is nothing to shake your head at when you
consider the price.

The Chromecast will launch in the United States first for $35, which
garnered an audible (but deserved) gasp from the media audience, a
typically jaded bunch at these product announcements.

Google reps promised that Chromecast will be shipped out to other
international markets as soon as possible.
Copyright http://www.zdnet.com

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Google Unveils New Nexus 7

Google unveiled a new version of its Nexus 7 tablet computer
Wednesday, boasting new features like a virtual surround sound and a
faster processor, as it looks to boost Android's lead over Apple 's
iPad in terms of market share for tablets.

Google showed off the new device, designed in partnership with Asustek
Computer , at an event in San Francisco. It is powered by an updated
version of Android, which also is the No. 1 software for smartphones.

The Mountain View, Calif., company is working to fend off Apple and
its popular iPad tablet, as well as Amazon.com's Kindle Fire tablets.
Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of Android and Chrome, said
Android tablets now account for nearly half of all such computers sold
worldwide.
"By the end of 2013, consumers are going to buy more tablets each year
than personal computers," said Pichai.

The new tablet, which goes on sale at Best Buy Wal-Mart and other
retailers July 30, costs $229 with 16 gigabytes of storage and $269
for 32 gigabytes, according to Google and the Best Buy website. That
compares to $329 for the 16-gigabyte iPad mini, an 8-inch tablet, and
$429 for the 32-gigabyte version.

The device will soon be available in major markets in Europe and Asia,
Google said.

The new Nexus device has parental controls so an owner can restrict
the type of apps their children can access, as well as 3D graphics and
video compression capabilities that would appeal to videogame app
developers, said Android executive Hugo Barra, at the event.

Google's support for the Nexus tablet serves several purposes,
including the need to compete with Amazon's $159 Kindle Fire tablet, a
formidable threat to Google. Unlike the majority of Android devices,
Amazon's tablet uses a separate version of Android that doesn't come
with Google services pre-installed. (Android is a free, open-sourced
software, so it is available to anyone.)

Google is currently at work on a major update of Android software that
is expected to be unveiled sometime later this year. Nearly a billion
Android devices have been activated since 2008, the company has said,
allowing Google to ensure that its revenue-generating services such as
Google Search have a guaranteed spot on people's mobile devices.

The Nexus 7 has a high-definition display that is more advanced than
that of the iPad, but its 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snap dragon S4 Pro quad-core
processor is less advanced than some Android enthusiasts had expected.

The Nexus 7 became the most successful device in the history of the
Nexus program—at one point selling at a rate of about one million
devices per month—after being launched last year. Typically, Nexus
devices cater to hardcore fans of Android and are meant to show
hardware makers what they can do with the Android operating system,
but aren't meant to be big sellers.

Still, Asus-made tablets still were a distant No. 4 behind Apple
Samsung Electronics and Amazon in terms of shipments during the
critical fourth quarter of last year, according to research firm IDC.

The Nexus 7 succeeded in part because it was the most advanced
Android-powered tablet on the market at the time and thanks to its low
$199 price tag and significant marketing push by Google, which some
analysts believe subsidized the device so that it cost the same as
Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet at the time.

Amazon has yet to release the next version of the Kindle Fire, which
is expected to be available before the fourth-quarter shopping season.

Unlike Apple, which generates hefty profit from the sale of hardware,
Google and Amazon play a different game. Google, which does get an
undisclosed cut of Nexus 7 sales, simply wants as many Android-powered
devices in the market because they are preloaded with
revenue-generating services such as YouTube, Google Search and Google
Maps. Amazon's bet is that customers will use its tablet to shop for
products and digital media that is sold by Amazon.

For Google, increased sales of Android tablets can help its financial
results in the short term, as prices for online ads viewed on tablets
are higher than for ads viewed on smartphones and nearly in line with
ads viewed on PCs. The rise of smartphones has weighed on Google's
revenue growth in recent quarters.
copyright http://stream.wsj.com

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Prince of Wales accepts £10 from well-wisher to buy royal baby a teddy bear The Prince of Wales accepted £10 from a wellwisher to pay for a teddy bear for his newborn grandson.

The Prince was handed a congratulations card for the Duke and Duchess
of Cambridge which was stuffed with a crisp £10 as he toured the Royal
Welsh Show in Builth Wells, Powys.
Between lengthy discussions about bee-keeping, sheep-rearing and the
price of cattle, the Prince, who was accompanied by the Duchess of
Cornwall, indicated that there was only one other subject on his mind;
his "absolutely gorgeous" grandson.
The Prince was on his way to the annual agricultural event's main show
ring after being shown some prize-winning cattle when Amanda Winney,
49, waved the card in his direction and caught his attention.
Delighted Mrs Winney, from Leominster, said: "He took the card and
said that he will pass it on which is fantastic.
"It's amazing to meet him. He shouldn't really be here what with the
new baby, but duty calls in his case.

She said the card, inside a pale blue envelope, depicted a baby in a
cradle and contained a £10 note in the hope that the new parents might
splash out on a cuddly toy.
When the Prince came across a heavily pregnant Bethan Davies, 36, from
Llangadog, he could not resist asking her whether or not she was
overdue and if she had chosen to find out the baby's sex.
Miss Davies told him that the gender of the baby, due on Monday, would
be a surprise, and he inadvertently confirmed that the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge had also chosen to do the same.
"It's better that way we had a lovely surprise on Monday when our
grandson was born," he replied.
Those manning the tannoys as the Prince arrived in various rings to
present trophies and speak to participants did their best to whip up a
flavour of the baby fever that has gripped the country in recent
weeks.
Andrew Jones, a farmer who was in charge of announcements in the sheep
ring, bellowed: "We must extend our congratulations to the Duke and
Duchess of Cambridge.
"It's a proud moment for Anglesey too, they're convinced that the new
prince was conceived there."
A member of the National Sheep Association also managed to crowbar a
baby reference into a speech, noting that although it had been a bad
year for the industry "nothing gave them more of a lift than then news
that his Royal Highness is now a grandfather".
The Prince, however, stoically kept to the subject in hand, save for
disclosing to one well-wisher that the as yet unnamed baby was
"absolutely gorgeous".
Such was the enthusiasm for the agricultural subjects at hand that few
thought to ask him for details about the newly born future king.
Rather than be showered with babygrows, booties and tips on
grand-fatherhood, he was presented with a picture of a prancing cob
and a sheepskin rug.
Paul Eales from Pembrokeshire Bees was not alone when he said he had
not thought of mentioning the baby when introduced to the royal.
"No, he was just really interested in the bees," he said.
"He has a very good understanding about them, I was really impressed."
Rhys Jones, 50, from the Cambrian Mountains Initiative, agreed: "No,
no, we didn't mention it. No tips or anything, we were too busy
talking about whether there were enough lambs for the scheme."
As the Prince left one venue for the next, he was congratulated by
Susan Fiander-Woodhouse, 52, the first in a line of people waiting to
meet him.
"Is everyone queuing to congratulate me?" he asked drily, before
passing quickly along.
He couldn't resist one reference to the newborn, however. Giving a
speech on behalf of the Prince's Countryside Fund, of which he is
president, he noted that it was his seventh visit to the show in 50
years. "That's probably why I've become a grandfather," he smiled.

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Spitzer asked about prostitutes amid Weiner scandal

Just for the record, Eliot Spitzer says he has not paid for
prostitutes since he resigned as New York governor in 2008.

The Wall Street Journal reports Spitzer was asked that question
Wednesday as he campaigned for New York City comptroller on Staten
Island. The query was prompted, obviously, by Anthony Weiner's
confirmation that he engaged in lewd online exchanges with women even
after resigning from Congress in 2011.
"Absolutely not," Spitzer is quoted as saying by the Journal. "And
we're done answering those questions."

Spitzer and Weiner are inextricably linked because they're both New
York Democrats who fell from grace because of sex scandals — and are
now trying to get elected to office again.

This isn't the first time Spitzer has been asked whether he still
engages in the behavior that forced him to step down. There was this
exchange, for example, last week with CNN's Jake Tapper, who noted
that paying for sex became a "Class E felony" under a law signed by
Spitzer:

Tapper: "When was the last time you broke that law? 2008?"

Spitzer: "That's correct."

Copyright www.usatoday.com

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How a terror attack backfired on Hezbollah

The EU move to label Hezbollah's military wing a terrorist group is
the fruit of a lengthy diplomatic, legal and intelligence campaign.
The European Union's decision to list Hezbollah's military wing as a
terrorist organization is the fruit of a lengthy diplomatic, legal and
intelligence campaign waged jointly by Israel, Britain, the United
States, the Netherlands and Canada. A cache of bombs discovered in
Nazareth, a 150-page legal document, and dozens of secret visits and
phone calls to various leaders were among the key factors contributing
to the decision.

The campaign began after the bombing in Burgas, Bulgaria, last July,
which killed five Israeli tourists and one Bulgarian. As intelligence
indicating that Hezbollah was to blame accumulated, the Foreign
Ministry decided the time was ripe for action.

To this end, it set up a special task force, headed by the ministry's
Deputy Director General Jeremy Issacharoff and Shai Cohen, head of the
Regional Security and Counterterrorism Department. The team also
included representatives of the National Security Council, the Defense
Ministry and the intelligence agencies. Similar task forces were set
up by Britain's Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department.

One of the task force's first moves was giving various EU countries
masses of intelligence that Israel had collected - not just about
Hezbollah's role in the Burgas attack, but also about its involvement
in Syria's civil war, money laundering, drug smuggling and setting up
sleeper cells in Europe. Unusually, the intelligence agencies agreed
to this massive transfer of sensitive information.

A senior Foreign Ministry official said that, among other things,
Israel passed on intelligence showing that Hezbollah was fighting
alongside President Bashar Assad's regime in Syria in early 2013,
before this became publicly known.

Israel also gave Berlin information about the assets and bank accounts
of 950 Lebanese Shi'ites living in Germany who were suspected of being
sleeper agents, or of involvement in transferring money to Hezbollah
and helping it with logistics. Similar information was given to Spain,
France and Italy.

One move that ultimately proved critical was Israel's decision,
immediately after the Burgas attack, to send a forensics team to help
investigate.

The Burgas probe, in which the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada
and Australia also participated, convinced the Bulgarian government to
announce in February 2013 that Hezbollah's military wing was behind
the attack.

One key piece of evidence was the large number of phone calls between
Burgas and various locations in Lebanon associated with Hezbollah,
including calls from phone numbers known to belong to Hezbollah
operatives. Another was the forged American driver's license used by
one member of the three-man cell, which was traced back to a Beirut
printer affiliated with Hezbollah.

The smoking gun, though, was the bomb's composition, including the
specific type of plastic explosive used - which proved identical to
the composition of 24 bombs discovered by Israeli security services in
Nazareth in August 2012. These bombs had been smuggled into the
country at Hezbollah's behest by a group of drug smugglers. Later, the
bomb's composition also proved an exact match to bombs discovered by
Thailand's security services in January 2012, at a warehouse owned by
a Hezbollah operative in Bangkok.

The Burgas investigation also uncovered the three perpetrators'
identities, but this information was kept secret. The senior Foreign
Ministry official said the men are hiding in southern Lebanon, and
that Israel is searching for them.

From the start, the ministry official said, the task force knew the
biggest obstacle would be translating the accumulated intelligence
about Hezbollah into evidence that would stand up in a European court.
Several EU countries, first and foremost Germany, said they wouldn't
support listing Hezbollah as a terrorist organization unless they were
sure their domestic courts wouldn't overturn the decision for lack of
evidence.

Consequently, the task force put together a 150-page document
detailing all the evidence, as well as its legal significance.

"We didn't just collect all the relevant material for them; we also
linked it to European legislation and various [legal] precedents," the
official said.

After months of work, the document was completed in May. It was given
first to Germany, which at that time was wavering. A few days after
the document was hand delivered to Germany's interior minister,
members of the task force gave a four-hour briefing to German
officials with additional intelligence material.

A week later, on May 22, Germany announced it was ready to blacklist
Hezbollah's military wing. This decision convinced several other
wavering countries that the evidence was truly solid.

With the legal obstacle surmounted, it was time for the diplomatic
campaign to begin.

About six weeks ago, the Foreign Ministry gave all EU ambassadors a
detailed briefing on the matter, and Israeli ambassadors in Europe
were instructed to do the same for the highest-level officials they
could reach - generally, foreign ministers, prime ministers or
presidents.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres also made
personal phone calls to the leaders of wavering states, such as
Austria, many of which voiced fears that listing Hezbollah as a
terrorist organization would destabilize Lebanon and make Hezbollah
even more extreme.

"We argued that Hezbollah was already destabilizing Lebanon by its
involvement in the Syrian war, its ties with Iran and its possession
of tens of thousands of rockets," and that blacklisting it would
actually "weaken its power in Lebanon," the senior Foreign Ministry
official explained.

Thus, in their calls to countries like Austria, Malta, Greece and
Slovakia, Netanyahu and Peres stressed both the Burgas attack and
Hezbollah's involvement in Syria.

Washington also exerted heavy diplomatic pressure. U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry and Under Secretary for Political Affairs Wendy
Sherman made calls to dozens of senior European officials in recent
weeks.

Now that the EU has finally made the decision in principle, the next
step is for each member state to enact appropriate legislation, and
then to start enforcing it. In theory, blacklisting Hezbollah's
military wing means that its money and assets in Europe will be
frozen, Europeans will be barred from doing business with it, and its
operatives will be denied visas to Europe.

The difficulty, however, lies in distinguishing between its military
and political wings, and determining which assets or operatives belong
to each. That is why Netanyahu stressed that though Israel welcomes
the EU move, it remains opposed to this distinction.
Copyright http://www.haaretz.com/

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6 Die in Egypt as Morsi Supporters Continue Protests

CAIRO — At least six people were killed Tuesday near a sit-in held by
supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi, the latest sign that
Egypt's political impasse is devolving into street battles.
The deaths brought to at least nine the number of people killed over
the last 24 hours during clashes in central Cairo, around Cairo
University in Giza and north of the city in the Nile Delta, making it
one of the deadliest periods since July 8, when more than 50
supporters of Mr. Morsi were killed by soldiers and police officers.

On Monday and Tuesday, the former president's supporters and
unidentified opponents fought running battles with firearms, bottles
and rocks near Tahrir Square in Cairo and on the edges of two protest
sites that have been held by Mr. Morsi's Islamist supporters for
weeks. The confrontations have escalated as the Islamists have
broadened their demonstrations, marching in cities across the country
as part of a determined but so far fruitless effort to restore Mr.
Morsi to power.

There has been little sign of a solution to the standoff, which
started after the military removed Mr. Morsi from power on July 3
after mass demonstrations throughout Egypt calling for his ouster. As
Egypt's new military-backed government has moved swiftly to assert its
authority, Mr. Morsi's movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, has refused,
at least publicly, to abandon its positions.

On Monday, the Brotherhood released a statement reiterating its
demands that the "coup must be halted" and that the president, the
Constitution and the Parliament must be restored.

"It was the putschists' intention to sow despair in the hearts of the
Egyptian people," the statement said.

The authorities appear to be unable or unwilling to halt the violence.
The fighting near the university spread to streets that have become a
virtual garrison for army troops and riot police officers. Mr. Morsi's
supporters have accused the police of joining the fight on the side of
their opponents, and said that early Tuesday, police officers had
fired on demonstrators in at least two locations.

That claim was impossible to verify. In front of Cairo University on
Tuesday morning, cars damaged in the fighting were hauled away as
protesters slept in tents. A man yelled "We only want security!" as
friends tried to comfort him. A mother and her two children, carrying
suitcases, walked away from the square, toward entrances once flimsily
barricaded and now fortified with walls.
Copyright http://www.nytimes.com

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Amanda Bynes forced to undergo mental health evaluation after allegedly starting small fire on stranger's driveway

Amanda Bynes was forced to undergo a mental evaluation on Monday
night, after the troubled starlet caused a commotion in a California
residential neighborhood.
Ventura County fire officials responded to a phone call at 8:38pm,
about a disturbance in a Thousand Oaks, Calif., neighborhood involving
Bynes, 27, who authorities believe started a small fire at a
stranger's residence.
"The fire was in a driveway of a single family dwelling," Ventura
County fire captain Scott Dettorre told the Daily News. "There wasn't
anything in the report to indicate it was a large fire."
"We did respond with an engine company," he said, adding that Bynes
was then taken into the care and custody of the Ventura County
Sheriff's Department, after it was determined that the onetime actress
didn't have any relationship to the homeowner
"[Bynes] met the criteria of 5150 (California Welfare & Institutions
Code)," Cpt. Don Aguilar told the News."She was detained and taken for
a mental health evaluation."
There were no injuries reported in relation to the fire incident, police said.
Bynes was also accused of trespassing at a nearby retirement
community, TMZ reported.
The embattled "Easy A" actress was stopped by management at the
facility and reportedly became argumentative when she was denied
access.
The former child star was accused of being drunk, and refused to leave
when a cab was called for her convenience - saying she had no money.
Bynes may have been trying to visit a relative at the retirement
community - the cab driver told the gossip site.
copyright http://www.nydailynews.com

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