Familiar Leader Emerges In The Frenzied Cloud-Based Productivity Apps Space

The productivity application space has always been interesting, as it represents the core of “shadow IT” — solutions adopted by end-users without the blessings or awareness of management or IT. Shadow IT dates back to the early days of the PC, when business users brought in machines, under the radar, with word processing and spreadsheet software. Microsoft rode this wave to dominate the corporate computing scene for decades.

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I Played ‘Exploding Kittens’ And Saw Many Wondrous Things

My friends are playing Exploding Kittens for the first time. Tension heightens as one person draws a card, praying it doesn’t spell out his doom.
The turn passes, and the next player snorts. She has played a card titled, “See the Future – Crawl inside a goat butt and see many wondrous things.”
“Denied!” says the next player, brandishing a card that reads, “The Pope of Nope has spoken,” and the tension breaks completely. The entire table erupts in a spontaneous giggle fit.
Simple rules, funny art and a record-breaking Kickstarter—even before Exploding Kittens was delivered, I figured it had to be good. Testing it out with a group of my eight closest friends, I found this game to be simple to learn, but strong enough to engage everyone until the end.
See also: I Played ‘Magic: The Gathering — Arena of the Planeswalkers’ And All I Got Was Drunk
First Look

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Will Unionizing Gawker And Vice Help Freelance Writers Earn A Living Wage?

“Every workplace could use a union,” Hamilton Nolan wrote this spring, announcing a group of Gawker Media’s editorial staff wanted to unionize. Shortly after the plan to join the Writers Guild of America East passed a majority vote at Gawker, a wave of unionization swept through digital publishing, with editorial staffers at Salon, The Guardian US, and Vice organizing similar internal movements. “Digital media is growing up and it’s time our digital reporters received the same benefits and protections as their print media colleagues,” Bernard Lunzer, president of the NewsGuild-CWA, which The Guardian will be joining, said at the time of the announcement.

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Microsoft officially releases Cortana for Android beta

Better late than never, right? While Microsoft had initially been aiming for a late June launch, and then announced Cortana would be making an appearance in beta form for Android sometime by the end of July, both of those launch windows were missed.

But now Microsoft is back, and it’s actually bringing with it an official beta launch. Cortana for Android is officially available via the Play Store right now, and it’s a free install for anyone that wants to give it a go. With Cortana, users will be able to replace Google Now as the digital personal assistant available by long-pressing the Android home button on their device, which should be good for easy integration and access to Microsoft’s creation.

There are some noteworthy changes, though. First, Cortana for Android won’t boast the “Hey, Cortana” feature like it does on Windows devices. However, the beta should work mostly the same as the Windows version, with Android users able to access the digital notebook that Cortana uses to keep track of likes, interests and other important pieces of information.

Cortana for Android is available right now. Who’s going to give it a shot?

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Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 y su nueva arquitectura Hexagon DSP 680

Qualcomm Snapdragon

Es innegable que aún en la actualidad muchos usuarios sufren los problemas del tan polémico Snapdragon 810 de Qualcomm. El sobrecalentamiento ha sido un aspecto intratable para los fabricantes y sin solución, únicamente como solución parcial para evitarlo se ha reducido la velocidad del reloj del procesador, disminuyendo su potencial de procesado para así, aliviar la carga del mismo y evitar una mayor temperatura.

Pese a esto, dicen que después de la tempestad viene la calma y debemos vislumbrar el Snapdragon 820, el nuevo procesador tope de gama que llegará próximamente en un buen número de terminales.

No sabemos si solucionará definitivamente las altas temperaturas, pero sus nuevas tecnologías y arquitectura prometen mejorar notablemente el rendimiento de los terminales incluso cargado de aplicaciones corriendo en segundo plano y con el consumo de batería que eso conlleva.

Hexagon DSP 680, la nueva arquitectura de Qualcomm

snapdragon_820_dsp_2_result

Hexagon DSP son las siglas de “Proceador de señal digital”, una nueva arquitectura que ya está implementada en el interior del Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 y que permite realizar mucho más rápido las tareas de la CPU y reducir el consumo de energía requerido.

Hay dos principales novedades en Hexagon 680. La primera es llamada “isla de baja potencia”, diseñada para mejorar la vida de la batería en casos cuyo consumo es más elevado al necesitar un constante contador de actividad como pueden ser los pasos, sensores de ubicación como el GPS y parecidos.

Por otro lado, la segunda es HVX, un hardware añadido que, combinado con Qualcomm ISP Spectra, mejorará las fotografías o vídeos en situaciones con poca luz, para así iluminar las áreas más oscuras y mejorar la calidad final. Y no solo esto, si no que permitirá realizar la acción de forma más veloz y consumo sólo el 10% de la potencia requerida en la actualidad.

hexagon-680-feature

Los avances que está consiguiendo Qualcomm respecto a su nuevo SoC Snapdragon 820 parecen ser sustanciales. Esto, quizás, es posible gracias a su nueva fabricación FinFET de 14nm, supuestamente fabricado en las instalaciones de Samsung para así, aprovechar todos los avances de la firma surcoreana con actuales y próximos Exynos.

¿Confiarás en Qualcomm y sus nuevos Snapdragon 820 para tu próximo terminal?

¿Y tú que piensas? Pásate por Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 y su nueva arquitectura Hexagon DSP 680 para dejar tu huella.

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Publicado recientemente en Andro4all

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