iOS 4.3 May Roll Out Mid-December, Will Bring In-App Subscriptions!

Just recently, Apple rolled out the iOS 4.2.1 update for its iOS devices, and word is in the air that Apple has already decided a launch date for the next version of its iOS : Apple iOS 4.3.

iOS 4.3 is expected to bring in-app subscriptions, performance and maintenance upgrades along with support for News Corp’s “The Daily” – the world’s first iPad-only newspaper/magazine. Subscribers of this news journal will be the first to use the in-app subscriptions that other apps on the Apple Store will follow suite, very soon.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball reported that The Daily will be launched on Dec. 9, and if speculations about a necessary iOS update to run this magazine on iPad were true, we may possibly see the update to iOS 4.3 rolling out as early as Dec 9th.

Until now, users needed to either download a free app or buy one for their device from Apple’s App Store. But with iOS 4.3 update introducing in-app subscriptions, users will be able to “subscribe” to an app (a news magazine / journal) and pay Apple (or associated firm) a periodic subscription fee for availing the corresponding services.

Although, it is completely unannounced that Apple is up to release the iOS 4.3 update this soon, the source reveals that the iOS 4.3 update was also destined to roll out mid-December this year. 

Xtranormal - If you can type, you can make a movie

Most of us have an idea for a video but simply do not have the time or budge to actually shoot and produce it. But here is a breath of fresh air.

The new application called Xtranormal hopes to make that problem a thing of the past.

The idea behind Xtranormal is that you provide the service your script and it converts it into a movie using 3D animated characters, text-to-speech reading of your words in one of many different voices as well as animations and camera angles that you select.

The product does text-to-speech conversion so you don't need human actors, but it will also lip-synch recorded speech if you want the voices to sound real.

The Web-based version of Xtranormal will have some limitations in regards to the number of characters it will support (two, I think), their actions, and the fact that you have to "render" each animation before you can see it. A downloadable version will allow more characters, more interaction between them, and it allows for a real-time preview of your show.

The results though  not always convincing,  is certainly a leap forward in the area video-scripting. With this application already being successful and gaining popularity with each passing day, there have  a lot critics propping up lately.

To them I ask, if they have ever even written a program? Java really doesn't count, unless you write a JAVA compiler. . I just love it when people who know nothing about the technical details are so generous with their criticism. Xtranormal has done something remarkable. Perhaps you need to be a technician to understand that.

You can certainly do some impressive things with Xtranormal. It can be especially useful for quickly “mocking up” a video or putting an idea out there for others to see. In short, it may not be a replacement for a real video with humans, but it might be a way to get a project up in a hurry if you don’t have the resources or time to do it yourself.

All in all if you want to do a quick, dirty and cheap video, Xtranormal is a great service. Yes, it won’t win you any awards nor will it rival the quality of what humans can do, but it is the fastest way to go from concept to video I’ve seen.

If you’re interested in it and can deal with its limitations, give Xtranormal a try. There are many situations where it can be useful. If nothing else, it can be a lot of fun to play around with. Click Here to make your movie.

Check out my first attempt at Xtranormal below:

Pirate Bay Loses Court Appeal, May Be Forced To Shut Down!

Pirate Bay, the “world’s most resilient bit torrent site” has lost appeal in the court of law and may be involuntarily shut down. Pirate Bay is a Swedish company managed by Fredrik Neij, 32, Gottfird Svartholm Warg, 25, Peter Sunde, 32 and Carl Lindstroem, 50.

The Pirate Bay first got mired into legal controversies in the year 2006. The Internation Federation of Phonographic Industry sentenced the company for copyright infringement of protected content which was shared without authorization from its rightful owners.

As a refresher, let us remind you that Pirate Bay is a torrent-based establishment that lets its users download content (media, books, presentations, etc) using Peer-to-Peer technology where users download the content from other’s computers connected over internet.

The founders of Pirate Bay claimed that the company does not upload copyrighted data directly, but allows file sharing between different users connected over the internet using Peer-to-Peer technology.

They were convicted for copyright infringement and for promoting illegal downloads over the internet as a verdict for the Pirate Bay Court Case. The company generates a revenue of about $2,00,000 annually through advertisements and has about 23 million users which include nearly 5 million registered users.

Founded in the year 2003, the Pirate Bay has allowed millions of users to free download songs, movies, documents, ebooks, etc globally. However, this has been termed as “llegal” means of sharing content.

The fine imposed by the court brings relief to Warner Bros, Sony Music Entertainment, EMI and Columbia Pictures who were reportedly benefitted from the damage payments imposed on Pirate Bay.

Of the four founders of Pirate Bay, three of them attended the court of law while the fourth one was “too ill” to appear in the court. The Swedish court has increased fines to 46m crowns which approximates to about £4.1m.

According to the Stockholm District court ruling, Mr. Neij was pronounced a 10-month sentence, Mr. Sunde 8-months and Mr. Lundstrom received a 4-month sentence while verdict for Mr. Svartholm Warg will be announced once he regains his health.

International Federation for the Phonographic Industry stated :

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“Today’s judgment confirms the illegality of The Pirate Bay and the seriousness of the crimes of those involved….It is now time for The Pirate Bay, whose operators have twice been convicted in court, to close. We now look to governments and ISPs to take note of this judgment, do the responsible thing and take the necessary steps to get The Pirate Bay shut down.”

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The verdict of the Pirate Bay trial hasn’t affected the Pirate Bay website as yet, but there is a fair probability of the services going down under command from the legal authorities.

7 Million Users Download Angry Birds For Android

Angry Birds for Android and iPhone is certainly one of the most popular touchscreen-based games till date. And what’s more interesting about it is the fact that the company reports to have achieved the milestone where 7 million users have downloaded the Angry Birds app for Android OS alone.

The Angry birds game for Android was released only about 50 days ago, and 7 million downloads in such a short span of time is a hallmark in itself. The revelation came to light through the game-maker’s official Twitter account recently.

Interestingly, we will soon be able to see, play and feast on Angry Birds Christmas version of the game which will presumably be introduced for both iPhone and Android operating systems.December 11th is supposedly that graceful day when the Christmas Angry Birds game will be released.

It is expected that Roxio will release an update to the game that will add the Christmas season game play for the insanely popular Angry Birds game.

When questioned about the free Angry Birds on Android OS while iOS is a paid app, the company responded by classifying it as a Google thing. This leads us to think that, maybe it’s free, because the Android OS is open source, and  so should be the game.

As the count of hardware branding for Google’s Android OS is increasing by the day, more and more people are absorbed into the consortium of Android fanatics. This not only helps Google in spreading the canopy of its Android OS, but also gives application and game developers like Roxio Mobile to reach to more consumer masses, easily.

Watch the following video to view a brief Angry Birds official game play:

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New! Find more Checkout deals while shopping at stores across the web by installing our Chrome extension.
Look for the Google Checkout button when you're ready to buy.

Apple-I computer sells for $210K at auction

An Apple-I computer sold for approximately $210K at auction in London this week – a markup of 425 times the original asking price of $666.66. The Apple-I, the first computer ever made by Apple, was part of a tech-centric showcase at Christie's auction house in London. According to the Associated Press, the winning bidder was Italian businessman and private collector Marco Boglione.

Christie's had posted an estimate of $160,300 to $240,450 for the machine.

The Apple-I was designed and built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who was in attendance at the auction in London. The very first Apple computer featured 4KB of memory, and a fully-functioning circuit board. Wozniak originally wanted to charge $777.77 for the Apple-I, but his partner, Steve Jobs, convinced him to drop the price tag to $666.66. Wozniak complied.

"Today my heart went out as I got to see things auctioned off like the Turing documents and the Enigma machine – and the Apple I," Wozniak told journalists after the auction. "It really was an important step, [even though] I didn't feel that way when I designed it. I'm very delighted for the gentleman who purchased it," he added.

Video Game Tester - Is It Real Or A Scam?

Okay now.. lets get straight to the point. This is holiday season (Thanksgiving Day is tomorrow) and I have a lot of time on my end. What do I do? Check out the latest of installment of Call of Duty called the "Black Ops".

Out of no where during the game, my friend suggests that we should try out to be a Video game Tester since we are so good at these games!

Now, you wouldn't expect Video Game Tester Jobs to be real, since they cannot be found in the official job listings. For some of us that would be enough reason to distrust it from the beginning. But for people that really want to become a game tester, this is not a reason to back down.

However, you should be very careful if you find a source that offers you a job like this, because there are a lot of scammers out there!

Let's gather some facts about video game tester jobs. When we search for a job like game tester we want to be sure that it is legit. Game developers need game testers, since their programmers aren't automatically gamers. I am sure that every hardcore gamer has ever found some glitches during gaming. Programmers never find them without the game being tested. They NEED people to test games for them and are willing to pay you for it!

Is there proof that video game tester jobs aren't scams? 

Yes, you have to sign up at the official websites in order to get a job there. If it was a scam, there would be an army of lawyers sieging their companies by now.

Is it worth it to become a video game tester? 
Video game tester jobs can be long and boring. When you are testing a game it can be that you need to do a level over and over again to successfully report a bug. Sometimes you need to start the entire game over and over because the game keeps crashing. If you don't love games then this can be a serious motivation breaker.

The money makes up for a lot of things. Frustration and hard work get compensated with a good salary. If you a beginner you will earn $ 10 to $ 30 bucks an hour. For some of you that counts for a royal salary. If your experience as avideo game tester increases so does your salary. Sometimes even up to a $ 120 bucks an hour. I found a website that investigates game tester job companies and here you can investigate these companies for yourself. 

Is it enough work to give up my current job? 
This varies per week. There is a list of companies that offer work for video game testers, but sometimes it's more and sometimes it's less. If you have multiple computers this would help a lot. You can earn money as a game tester with PC, Playstation, Xbox, Xbox 360, you name it. If you let the developers know that you have multiple computers they will put you higher on the list. As simple as that.

Treat video game tester jobs as real jobs. They are real jobs! Be disciplined and remind yourself over and over that you are the one that gets paid to play video games. It beats a lot of other jobs on multiple areas. Yeah, it can be a lot of fun, but frustrating too. Make sure you control your emotions and you will be fine.

So do some research on the companies before joining them but don't forget to have fun with it!

Porsche Reaches 1 Million Facebook Fans, Will Carve Their Names Onto A Car

In what has to be a first, luxury auto manufacturer Porsche will be celebrating its one millionth Facebook fan by carving the names of fans who sign up through the social network onto a special (and probably very unattractive) Porsche model to be displayed in the Porsche museum in Stuttgart, Germany.

Porsche has some pretty intense online outreach (A Porsche Family Tree! A Porsche Google Chrome theme!), but for most people (myself included) “Liking” that Porsche on Facebook is the closest we’re going to get to a Porsche in real life.

So here’s to hoping the company has an even better surprise planned for its relatively modest 3,305 Twitter followers. Followed.

Twitter to create news network

Biz Stone, the co-founder of popular microblogging site Twitter, is eager to harness the vast quantities of information that it helps its users share to create a news network, he told Reuters on Monday.

A Twitter news network would not necessarily be run by Twitter itself but would be in partnership with several existing news organizations, and would be open, Stone said.

"From the very beginning this has seemed almost as if it's a news wire coming from everywhere around the world," he told Reuters Television on the sidelines of the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford technology event.

"I think a Twitter News Service would be something that would be very open and shared with many different news organizations around the world."

Twitter receives 95 million short messages, or 'tweets' - of no longer than 140 characters - each day from its 175 million registered users.

It already shares its incoming feed with Google Inc, Microsoft Corp's Bing search service and Yahoo Inc, but Stone said he envisaged other news organizations might take more specialized access.

Twitter could also help news organizations get in touch with the people on the ground experiencing events on which they wanted to report, Stone said.

Privately-owned Twitter raised $100 million from investors last year, valuing the company at $1 billion, and has been reported to be considering a large round of funding.

The company has declined comment on whether it is in talks with investors.

Apple Announces Black Friday Sale

Apple will be hosting its traditional Black Friday sale again this year, and the company began emailing customers with reminders on Tuesday. Black Friday is the day after the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday where retailers typically offer extra discounts on products to kick off the holiday buying season.

Apple isn’t saying yet just what kind of deals it will be offering during its one day sale. The company is, however, teasing shoppers by saying “You’ll find dozens of great iPad, iPod and Mac gifts for everyone on your list.”

In previous years, Apple has offered small discounts on Macs and iPods, but not on iPhones. Accessories like Apple keyboards and mice, along with third-party products, have been discounted in the past, too.

Apple’s Black Friday sale will be available in the company’s retail stores and online store on Friday, November 26.

For Black Friday Sale Info of other major brands click here.

Ireland: Banks "are up for sale"

Ireland's banks are up for sale, the country's central bank chief said, as the government seeks to cut them down in size after their reckless lending forced the country to seek an international bailout.

"They are for sale as far as I am concerned," Patrick Honohan said on Tuesday. "I have been an advocate for a number of years for small countries to have foreign owners for their banks".

Dublin has already said it will intensify reform of the banks and surplus activities will have to be discarded.
Analysts said there was limited scope to sell assets and any sales could be at a discount, or require the government to cap potential losses.

Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager warned there will have to be pain in any consolidation.

"The amount of money needed to clean up the Irish banking system is now being studied by experts. Shareholders and holders of subordinated bonds in Irish banks will have to bleed in a restructuring process," he said.

Allied Irish Banks has already sold prize assets in Poland and the United States and last week halted the sale of its UK business due to a lack of interest.

"We are of the view that any fast-track forced disposal of assets will more than likely have to come at a discount to book-value, even after allowing for government indemnities in relation to future loan losses," said Ciaran Callaghan, analyst at NCB in Dublin.

He said that the government faces a "difficult task" in accelerating the deleveraging of assets and reducing its reliance on European Central Bank funding.

Value of Rs 500 - India

Blogged by PrimeRose.

Check out the interesting video below depicting the different value a single Rs 500 note holds for different people in the second most populous nation in the world - India. 

After watching the clip, let us ponder ourselves the worth of money in our own countries across the globe.

Happy 25th Birthday to Windows 1.0

Windows 95? A hazy memory at this point. But Windows 1.0? Mostly forgotten.


Windows 1.0 was two years late—shipping, finally, on November 20th, 1985. Bill Gates had announced it. It would be great. It would be graphical. It would, most of all, bring Microsoft up to date with Apple, whose GUI systems were smoking the clunky text fest that was MS-DOS. Text was dead. People wanted to see their files, not read them. People wanted metaphors. Each thing you wanted to do on a computer—that was something separate in your head, right? They should be fenced off, not all slopped together in a tower of command prompts.


Shortly thereafter, Microsoft started touring around to demo their new wonder interface. Windows! Move 'em around! Be amazed! And how were they received by would-be customers? This probably says it all: "We laughed, just laughed them out of the place," says Nathaniel Borenstein, who was doing IT work for Carnegie Mellon at the time, "Because we had a vastly superior window manager of our own, and these guys came in with this pathetic and naïve system. We just knew they were never going to accomplish anything."


Nathaniel was mostly right—except about that last part, of course. But it was a clunker. It was bland. How bland? They were going to call it "Interface Manager" before a sage marketing chief intervened. Interface Manager. It was functionally sparse—a tepid drip of graphical interface. No trash can to delete files! And the Windows themselves? The feature so prominent they named the entire OS after it? They couldn't overlap. If you wanted to save space, you could only throw them onto a mostly useless "tiled" view. This was still the case two years later, when Windows finally shipped. Late.


A quarter of a century later—25 years that include a lot of elbowing against Apple—Windows is beyond dominant. While 1.0 might have been an unimpressive dud, some iteration of Windows is now running on over 90% of all computers. So in spite of Nathaniel Borenstein, happy birthday little guy. It took you 25 years, but you made it.

The New iPod Nano Watch

The iPod Nano Watch is the latest rage among youngsters who seem to be intent on soon replacing the digital watch with the iPod Nano watch!

The iPod Nano Watch straps are from Kickstart. Infact, the iPod Nano Watch is not actually even a watch. It’s an iPad Nano strapped onto a wrist-wrap to make it look like a watch.

The TikTok and LunaTik iPod Nano watches are the two models of iPod Nano straps that Kickstart has unveiled so far. TikTok is the cheaper version of the two, and is basically a snap-in frame made on a plastic band that locks your iPod Nano as a wristwatch once it’s locked into the frame.

Lunatik, on the other side, is a stainless steel premium version of the same. It is built with Aerospace Grade Aluminum with the straps made out of silicone rubber while the bezel retracts and contracts to enable lock functionality when the iPod Nano is slipped into the frame.

Apple recently released the iPod Nano 6G : a tiny device with a color display and multi-touch support with its features listing audio, video playback, photo slideshows, radio, pedometer and games among other things.

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So many watch companies have struggled to make a multi-touch color display watch to date. It is no small task. The Nano itself is an engineering wonder…And in clock mode the Nano battery lasts at least a week before recharging. We are excited to help complete the effort in converting it to a watch that everyone can enjoy.

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The TikTok iPod Nano watch is priced at $34.95 while the LunaTik will retail for $69.95. Of course, that does not include the most wonderful thing about the aforementioned accessories : the iPod Nano.

China builds 15 Floor Hotel in 6 Days!!!

As the United States and China battle over the finer points of currency manipulation at the G-20 summit, American negotiators may want to take note of this startling testimonial to the productivity of Chinese workers: A construction crew in the south-central Chinese city of Changsha has completed a 15-story hotel in just six days. If nothing else, this remarkable achievement will stoke further complaints from American economic pundits that China's economy is far more accomplished than ours in tending to such basics as construction.

Meanwhile, it's easy to imagine the disorientation of Changsha residents who'd gone away, or who just hadn't recently ventured into the downtown neighborhood of the new Ark Hotel: "Darling, I don't remember a hotel there, do you?"

The work crew erected the hotel -- a soundproofed, thermal-insulated structure reportedly built to withstand a magnitude 9 earthquake -- with all prefabricated materials. In other words, a crew of off-site factory workers built the sections, and their on-site counterparts arranged them on the foundation for the Ark project.

Despite the frenetic pace of construction, no workers were injured -- and thanks to the prefab nature of the process, the builders wasted very few construction materials. 

Below is a time-lapse video that shows the hotel being built from the ground up in less than a week:

Black Friday 2010 Deals

TheBlackFriday.com is one of the most popular source for black friday ads and black friday sales information. The website has been featured on various TV channels, newspapers, radio stations and magazines. Here some of the updated ads on that site:

Toysrus	JC Penny	Meijer	BestBuy
RadioShack	Tommy Hilfiger	Olympia Sports	Rite Aid
Target	Military BX	Roomstore	Lowe's
Express	Bealls Florida	Macys	CVS Pharmacy
Walgreens	Sears	Kohl's	Tanger Outlets
Gander Mountain	RackRoomShoes	Woodcraft	Harbor Freight
Freds	Ace Hardware	True Value	Bass Pro Shops
Half Price Books	Belk	Michaels	Costco
Blockbuster