Posts Tagged ‘productivity’

Under new CEO Marissa Mayer, Yahoo has been working on expanding the services it offers across multiple platforms and its latest move on that front is the acquisition of Astrid. The Astrid Tasks and To-do list app is a popular productivity manager on Android and iOS, particularly notable for its tie-ins with Google Calendar and the ability to assign tasks to others. In a blog post, CEO and co-founder Jon Paris announced the company will be joining Yahoo’s mobile team with a goal of “making the world’s daily habits more inspiring and entertaining.” As for existing users, the service will continue to work as-is for 90 days, and those who have paid for annual subscriptions to add on file storage, backup and more can expect refunds from Yahoo. There will also be a way for users to download all their data, although there aren’t any details on that yet. Astrid had received funding from Google Ventures, among others, but as shown by the launch of Google Keep it seems the usual giants in tech will be focusing on in-house ways to offer productivity features.

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Task management app / service Astrid is Yahoo’s latest acquisition

Microsoft would really, really like us to drop our stand-alone copies of Office in favor of Office 365 subscriptions. Really. Division president Kurt DelBene prefers to lure us in with the carrot rather than the stick, however, and just hinted at the company’s TechForum that there will likely be a “rapid cadence” of upgrades to keep productivity fans happy. There’s even the prospect of new apps coming out for subscribers. While that’s tempting, DelBene also wants to allay fears that we’ll be dragged kicking and screaming into the company’s recurring revenue model

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Microsoft exec teases that Office 365 will get new apps, rapid-fire updates

Sharp has just confirmed reports that it is getting a 10.4 billion yen (about $111.6 million) capital infusion from Samsung. While that sum only gives Samsung a three percent stake in Sharp, it would make it the biggest individual shareholder that isn’t a financial institution and the fifth-largest stakeholder overall. The deal gives Samsung access to Sharp’s LCD supply (particularly its 32-inch television screens), and Sharp will use the cash to expand and improve its TV and smartphone panel production. Continue reading…

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Samsung invests $112 million in Sharp to secure LCD supply

We know what you think this hands-on is about. That laptop you see up there has a Tobii eye-tracking sensor affixed to it, and you’re probably wondering why we’re still dwelling on it after getting hands-on twice at CES 2012 and once more at CES 2013. But that’s not what we’re here to show you today.

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Hands-free Fruit Ninja: NUIA makes it easier to code PC apps with eye control (hands-on)

More Info Samsung announces Series 5 and Series 7 Windows 8 tablets with S Pen apps, optional keyboards Samsung ATIV Smart PC review (AT&T LTE) Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro tablet with LTE clears the FCC At this point we’ve seen countless Windows 8 devices — Ultrabooks, convertibles and hybrids, oh my — but to date there are only a few in the latter category running Ultrabook-grade processors. Exhibit A, of course, is Microsoft’s long-awaited Surface Pro , but Samsung also has a horse in the race: the ATIV Smart PC Pro. This $1,200 machine packs a Core i5 CPU and includes a keyboard dock and an S Pen to appeal to productivity-minded users. We’ve spent some time with this 11.6-inch hybrid’s Atom-powered sibling, the ATIV Smart PC , and walked away unimpressed

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Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro review: a capable Windows 8 tablet with S Pen support

It’s no secret that copies of Office 2013 bind themselves to a single computer, but Microsoft has now confirmed to Computerworld that the software’s license can’t be reassigned to another PC, as is possible with Office 2010. When asked whether a license could be transferred to another machine if the original rig was destroyed, lost or stolen, Microsoft replied with a frosty, “No comment.” However, Redmond did mention that the productivity suite could be reinstalled on the same PC after a crash. Just how Ballmer and Co.

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Microsoft confirms Office 2013 licenses can’t be transferred to other computers

This year’s Grammy Awards weren’t as packed with gadget advertising — gadvertising* — as the Super Bowl , but Microsoft and Google still coughed up to hawk their wares. The former wanted to demonstrate the productivity chops of the Surface Pro with a commercial that implies the device will cause your employees to breakdance involuntarily. Google, on the other hand, wanted to show off the powers of the Nexus 4 and Google Now to help you distinguish between fish and vegetables, in case the smell isn’t enough. Curious to know more?

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Grammy Awards 2013 ads see Google and Microsoft go head-to… foot (video)

We all know the feeling. You’re sleepless in the sad hours of the night or stumbling around early on a hazy weekend morning in need of something to read, and that pile of unread books just isn’t cutting it. Why not take a break from the fire hose of Twitter and RSS and check out our weekly roundup of essential writing from around the web about technology, culture, media, and the future?

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The best writing of the week, February 10

It’s still the same old story , really. Amazon pulls in revenues equal to a small nation’s GDP and makes a small profit for itself in the process. In this case, particularly small.

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Amazon posts $21.27 billion in 2012 Q4 revenues, makes tinier profit of $97 million

What is it with Canadian stores potentially spoiling launch plans ? Fresh from revealing a white PS3 bundle on late notice, Best Buy Canada and its Future Shop sibling are both listing multiple entries for Microsoft’s Office 2013 and Office 365 in downloadable and retail forms. We’ll refrain from comments on pricing given possible cross-border markups, but all of the entries are shown arriving January 29th. Microsoft hasn’t confirmed anything beyond its established first-quarter target , so take the date with the requisite grains of salt; any truth to the schedule, though, will leave just a short wait for productivity mavens. Filed under: Software , Microsoft Comments Via: Neowin Source: Best Buy Canada , Future Shop

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Office 2013, 365 listed as arriving January 29th at Canadian retailers

Americans who picked up a Samsung tablet in 2012 may have a surprise this weekend: the company has confirmed that it’s rolling out its promised Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update to US, Wi-Fi only versions of the Galaxy Note 10.1 and both Galaxy Tab 2 sizes. As we know by now, Note 10.1 owners squeeze the most out of the software revamp with S Pen features borrowed from the Galaxy Note II , such as Air View’s hover-to-peek functionality, Quick Command shortcuts and the ability to clip content. There’s also a tablet-specific Cascade View to see more than two apps at once. Galaxy Tab 2 users don’t get much as much in the bargain, although we wouldn’t knock the promised speed improvements inherent to Google’s OS refresh.

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Samsung posts Jelly Bean update for Galaxy Note 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 2 in the US

Evernote has been one busy bee, er, pachyderm lately — extending its proverbial trunk to a more professional crowd with the launch of Evernote Business and even cozying up to Samsung’s Terminator-sounding T9000 smart-fridge . For its next trick, the popular productivity app is giving some extra love to Windows Phone users by way of a feature-laden update. One of the shiny new bells and whistles is support for the aforementioned Evernote Business, including note creation and searching via Business Notebooks. There’s also a new PIN lock feature to ensure that your notes can’t be viewed when sharing your Windows phone with members of the unwashed masses.

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Evernote’s Windows Phone app gets PIN lock, Business support in update

Refrigerators with touchscreens haven’t made much of a dent in the American home, but they’re certainly a staple at CES. Samsung’s latest entry, the rather large 32 cubic-foot four-door T9000 LCD, isn’t exactly new territory for the company. At 2011′s show the the RF4982 showed what was possible with an 8-inch display and a few productivity apps, but the 9000 adds some much needed versatility by integrating Evernote into the Linux-based OS.

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Samsung debuts T9000 refrigerator with LCD and Evernote integration

Wunderlist is one of those apps that’s beloved by productivity nerds, but not very well known outside of those circles. Part of the appeal came from its availability on almost every platform out there. To reach true OS agnosticism 6Wunderkinder, however, relied on HTML5 — which makes porting an app easy, but comes with its own drawbacks, including lackluster performance. (Just ask Mark Zuckerberg .) With the revamp, Wunderlist 2, the task management platform now has truly native apps for Android, iOS, OS X and Windows to compliment its web site. There are a few new features, including push notifications, reminders and reoccurring tasks, but it’s the dramatically smoother and speedier operation that’s the real story here

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Wunderlist 2 debuts, ditches HTML5 for native apps on Android, Windows, iOS and Mac

For Windows Phone users, the news out of Google today couldn’t be much worse. The company announced it’s removing support for Microsoft’s Exchange ActiveSync protocol for new devices from January 30th, 2013. Google Apps for business accounts will be unaffected and existing devices that are setup to sync mail, calendar, and contacts will work fine, but new devices will not be able to use the Exchange ActiveSync protocol with Gmail. It’s a big blow to Windows Phone and part of a bigger feud between the companies over the past few months.

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Google drops a Gmail-shaped bomb on Windows Phone

TweetDeck today announced a new feature that may not nab it any design or productivity awards, but, still, it’ll surely be appreciated by some power users of the Twitter-owned client. And while the ability to embed tweets isn’t exactly novel at this point (Twitter’s had it for many months), it’s still nice to now have the option present on both the web and Chrome versions of the application — which, in turn, should make it easier to insert select snippets from the Blue Bird social network into your personal website or blog. Besides the “Embed this Tweet,” TweetDeck didn’t make any other additions, though the service did make it clear that it spends “a lot of time improving TweetDeck for a large consumption of Tweets, as this is one of the core uses of the product.” Onto the next one then. Filed under: Internet Comments Via: The Next Web Source: Tweetdeck

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TweetDeck for the web and Chrome gains ability to embed tweets, not much else

Even though Samsung only announced volume production of ultra-fast eMMC memory chips back in August , it’s already upgrading to a newer generation of hardware. Moving from the previous 20nm process to 10nm, the new 64GB eMMC Pro Class 2000 has a 20 percent smaller physical footprint, and claims 30 percent advantages in both performance and manufacturing productivity. While its previous chips only starting taking advantage of JEDEC ‘s eMMC 4.5 interface standard a few months ago, Samsung plans to approach the group next year to create a new standard that can handle this design. It has a write speed of 2,000 IOPS (input/output per second) and a read speed of 5,000 IOPS, besting the 1,500/3,500 numbers reported on the older hardware, and kicks up the bandwidth to 260 MB/s read and 50MB/s write.

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Samsung’s new 10nm-process 64GB mobile flash memory chips are smaller, faster, better

Diesel fuel drums outside the Peer1 data center in Lower Manhattan. Just before 5 p.m. on Monday, the team behind New York’s Fog Creek Software announced in a blog post that its services would be online during Hurricane Sandy, despite the fact that the company’s main data center was located in an evacuation zone in the low-lying Financial District. “Given the preparation work that’s gone into this, we are confident that all of our services will remain available to our customers throughout the weather,” systems administrator Bradford Ley wrote. “Consider this the ‘Everything is Perfectly Fine Alarm.’” The storm hit.

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Post-hurricane, New York’s internet industry runs on diesel

“Our vision for Skitch hasn’t changed at all,” Evernote CEO Phil Libin insists, “and the core beliefs of its founders are lined up with ours.” Yet, plenty of Skitch users are upset with a recent update to the app that removed some well-loved features like instant uploads and added long, ungainly Evernote URLs in place of Skitch’s short links. “We did a full rewrite of Skitch, and we didn’t take anything out — there’s just some stuff we haven’t put in yet,” Libin says. Evernote acquired Skitch back in August 2011 , and has slowly been integrating the two popular applications. But he isn’t worried. “We have to draw some lines and ask ‘What is Evernote not?’ and ‘What is Skitch not?’” he says.

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Evernote CEO Phil Libin responds to Skitch critics: ‘We don’t think the world needs another MS Paint’

The Archos 101 XS , a 10-inch ICS tablet packing a magnetically attached keyboard dock, is now available for purchase via the company’s European websites. The slate, with 16GB of internal storage, is going for £300 (about $487). No word yet on when this guy will make it to North America. Check out our review for the full lowdown on this unique, productivity-minded tablet, and non-stateside types can click through to the Archos site to nab one for themselves. Filed under: Tablets Archos 101 XS available in Europe for £300 via the company’s online store originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Sep 2012 17:13:00 EDT.

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Archos 101 XS available in Europe for £300 via the company’s online store

Europe’s premier consumer electronics trade show has further cemented its status on the industry’s radar, thanks in no small part to Samsung , Sony and a shocking number of 84-inch 4K TVs . Since Wednesday, we’ve welcomed a brand new Galaxy Note , a healthy heaping of smaller mobile phones, a few cameras (including that Android stunner ) and enough laptops and tablets to keep us computing well into the fall. From your perspective, the show ran silky smooth, though Berlin’s mobile data plague continued to take its toll on our productivity, while the Messe’s absolutely insane sprawl left us with a few well-worn shoes. As always, we still had a blast bringing you all the latest gear as it hit the floor, and German hospitality (and beer) made the setbacks a bit more bearable.

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IFA 2012 wrap-up: Galaxy Note II, 84-inch 4K TVs, Windows 8 convertibles and much more

We struggled to find the utility in a 21:9 aspect ratio display when we reviewed the Toshiba Satellite U845W ultrabook , but perhaps it was just too small. If that’s the case, LG’s cinematic EA93 might be just the ticket — it’s a 29-inch IPS monitor with 2560 x 1080 resolution, which should be great for watching movies or maintaining dozens of feeds in TweetDeck. LG claims it’ll improve productivity, and to that end there’s a “4-Screen Split” feature that breaks the display up into four segments. The company also announced the EA83, a more conventional 27-inch IPS monitor with 2560 x 1440 resolution. We don’t have details on pricing or release yet, but both models will be shown off at IFA in Berlin this week and we’ll try to check them…

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LG showing 29-inch 21:9 IPS monitor at IFA

Prepaid carriers Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile are getting their own Samsung Galaxy phones, set to arrive in September. Boost will be getting the Samsung Galaxy S II 4G , a WiMAX-enabled version of the near-ubiquitous smartphone. It will be available on September 6th, for $349.99. A couple of mid-range devices will follow in its wake, including the Samsung Galaxy Rush — which runs Android 4.0 — and the Samsung Array, which offers a QWERTY keyboard. Virgin Mobile will begin offering the Galaxy Reverb, which we caught a glimpse of last month .

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Boost and Virgin launch new Android smartphones: Galaxy S II, Galaxy Reverb (hands-on photos)

The FCC and non-profit organization Connect2Compete are expanding their efforts to provide low-cost access to technology with the “PC Pledge 100″ campaign . With the help of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the initiative intends to increase computer ownership in low-income households through PCs donated from US organizations. Access to the internet and computers has become increasingly important for those in school or entering the job force. With studies showing that about 60 percent of low-income households do not have a computer and that 66 million US residents have no computer skills, Connect2Compete’s low-cost PCs, internet services, and free digital literacy training have become an invaluable resource for those..

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‘PC Pledge 100′ to use refurbished business computers to increase PC adoption in low-income households

RIM’s current CEO Thorsten Heins has been very candid about his company’s plans and past, but he has usually given the impression that the company wouldn’t even consider deviating from its one true vision of a BlackBerry OS future. Although BlackBerry 10 is very much the center of RIM’s universe today, Heins has revealed to The Telegraph that his firm’s eyes did stray briefly — at one point, it “seriously” investigated Android as a platform. The company ended up backing away after deciding a “me-too” strategy didn’t fit the productivity-obsessed BlackBerry crowd, the executive says. RIM decided, like Nokia, that it couldn’t differentiate enough in Google’s ecosystem. There’s still some time to go before we learn whether or not the gamble on the in-house OS pays off.

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RIM chief: we looked ‘seriously’ at Android, didn’t want to join the herd