After years of hammering away at Apple’s share of the smartphone market with cheap-to-free Android phones, Google has lately adopted a new tactic to win mobile.
Call it “the worm strategy”–because Google is attacking Apple from the inside out.
The New Year doesn’t need to bring on a new headache, but just in case, the celebs have the answers to your hangover woes.
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Despite promises of staffing increases, the Chicago Police Department has fewer beat officers in patrol districts across the city than before Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis of city data has found.
Days after he was sworn into office last year, Emanuel announced the start of what he described as a major shift in how the police department assigns officers across the city. He promised to fulfill a campaign pledge by assigning 1,000 more cops to high-crime areas without reducing the police presence in other parts of the city.
Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi has some fresh ink!
On Monday, the ‘Jersey Shore’ star took to her blog to explain the significance of her seventh tattoo:
I haven’t mentioned this or showed anyone besides Jionni this tattoo! I got this last week when we shot our final Jersey Shore reunion š My fierce leopard tattoo.
Say “Hello” to the New year.
And while 2012 may be in the past, let’s not forget those breakthrough Latinos who will surely shine even brighter in 2013. On the political front we saw Republican Marco Rubio become a prominent figure in the GOP, while Mexican-American Mayor of San Antonio JuliĆ”n Castro became the first Latino to give the keynote speech at a Democratic National Convention.
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By Sharat Pradhan
LUCKNOW, India, Jan 1 (Reuters) – The ashes of an Indian student who died after being gang-raped were scattered in the Ganges river on Tuesday as reports of more attacks stoked a growing national debate on violence against women.
The death of the 23-year-old woman, who has not been named, prompted street protests across India, international outrage and promises from the government of tougher punishments for offenders.
Police on Tuesday confirmed they would push for the death penalty for her attackers – the force can recommend prosecutors pursue particular punishments in Indian trials.
The physiotherapy student was raped and tortured on Dec. 16 by a group of men armed with a metal bar on a private bus in New Delhi, nicknamed India’s ‘rape capital’. She died from her injuries on Saturday in a Singapore hospital.
Relatives scattered the woman’s remains in India’s largest river, which is sacred to the Hindu religion, during a small ceremony in the district of Ballia where she was born, a senior local official told Reuters.
“The immersion of the ashes was a private affair, a family affair,” said R.M. Srivastava, home secretary of Uttar Pradesh, the state where the ceremony took place.
“NEW YEAR, NEW ATTACKS”
Indian media reported a string of new attacks on Tuesday, including a woman set on fire, allegedly by a stalker, in Uttar Pradesh and another woman stabbed to death in a busy market district of eastern Delhi.
In a debate titled “New Year, New Attacks, New Rapes” on television network NDTV, lawyers and politicians from several parties promised fast action to tighten laws.
“Keep up the social pressure, socially ostracise these people,” said Renuka Chowdhury, a senior member of the ruling Congress party.
Protesters braved chilly weather in New Delhi to hold candlelight vigils and small rallies on New Year’s Day.
“I’m going to stand here until the government actually decides to give women some safety,” one young woman told journalists. Other protesters brandished placards that read “First of January is a black day.”
The attack revealed deep fissures in Indian society, where staunchly chauvinist views clash with a fast-modernising urban culture in which women play a growing role in public life.
The case also cast a spotlight on an epidemic of violence against women in India, where a rape is reported on average every 20 minutes. Media coverage of such crimes has intensified in the wake of the outcry over the Delhi attack.
CHARGES EXPECTED
Five men and a teenager have been detained over the attack and police sources on Tuesday said charges would likely be filed on Wednesday or Thursday.
Police are seeking the death penalty against four of the accused, one senior police source told Reuters.
They will also likely be charged with gang rape, abduction and destruction of evidence, the source said. The juvenile can not be executed under Indian law, although the victim’s brother has called for all the accused to be hanged.
Anger at the brutality of the assault and the slow footed response from authorities spilled into the streets before Christmas, with police and protesters fighting running battles near the heart of government in Delhi.
The Indian Medical Association has questioned the decision to move the victim, who was suffering a massive blood infection and organ injuries, to Singapore, where she died.
On Tuesday police said they arrested a man who attempted to plant a low intensity explosive device near the house of one of the accused. The device was safely detonated, the force said. (Additional reporting by Suchitra Mohanty in NEW DELHI; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
No. 8 Stanford (11-2) vs. Wisconsin (8-5), 5 p.m. (ESPN)
Line: Stanford by 6.
Series Record: Wisconsin leads 4-0-1.
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At this point it’s hard to find a skeptic who would raise an eyebrow at the notion that our planet is round. But every family has that one uncle or cousin who’s so caught up in conspiracy theories they’ll question anything. And if you happen to find yourself in a tedious argument defending the spherical nature of the Earth, Minute Physics has put together a useful top ten list of irrefutable facts proving our home is indeed round. More »
The strength of Samsung‘s 2012 depends on whether you’re in the South Korean company’s product team or its legal team. Seldom does a single firm see such a mixture of fate in the same product segment: huge success – both in sales and user reaction – to the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II, versus a billion-dollar judgement against Samsung at the hands of arch-rival (and key components customer) Apple. All in a year’s work for a company described as both an “arch copyist” and a capable innovator.
Samsung’s device successes are epitomized by two phones, the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II. The Galaxy S III represents Samsung’s gradual refinement of its mobile strategy, a third-generation showcase of the best of the company’s own components, wrapped up with copious marketing and launching to reviewer praise and huge consumer sales. Beyond Google’s own Nexus – and perhaps even despite it – it’s the one phone which has been most associated with Android in 2012.
As for the Note II, that’s arguably the strongest argument against Samsung as a “copyist” in the mobile market. The follow-up to the well esteemed (and, initially at least, much derided) Galaxy Note of 2011, the second-gen Note II not only polished off the rough edges until, at first glance, you could mistake the “phablet” for its Galaxy S III sibling (not to mention overlook the fact it has a vast 5.5-inch display), but it continued to make a legitimate case for the use of a stylus on the move.
Originally criticized as a poorly-implemented workaround to patchy resistive touchscreens, the stylus had fallen from favor until Samsung rejuvenated it in 2011, with Wacom technology used to good result in improving accuracy and delivering features like pressure support which capacitive touchscreens so far don’t offer. However, it’s Samsung’s customized features, such as the pen-enabled S Plan journal app, which actually leverage the stylus’ presence in a meaningful way, indicating Samsung is finally catching on to the idea that it needs to not only develop new features, but explain to us why we might actually want them.
Sadly the success Samsung saw in phones is yet to be repeated in tablets, and while the Nexus 10 was praised for its high-resolution display – besting the iPad with Retina display, no less, at least in terms of sheer pixel count – the absence of Android apps to showcase slates meant it failed to make the market impact that, say, the cheap Nexus 7 did. Smart TV has also wavered, and while Samsung is arguably doing the most imaginative things with its HDTV range – motion control, voice recognition, streaming from all manner of apps and services, web-browsing, video calls, and more – consumers themselves are still to demonstrate that they actually care about those features beyond the basics of great picture quality.
It’s hard to avoid Samsung’s legal issues in 2012, the cloud over its best-selling phones. The precarious and bizarre balancing act with Apple – with the two companies arch rivals in the marketplace, but closely interwoven in the supply chain – reached a peak with the US courts awarding $1bn in damages to the Cupertino firm, something Samsung has been swift to contest. Outside of the courtroom, however, Apple continued in its attempts to extract itself from Samsung dependence, prompting questions around how long the Korean company can rely on milking its foe for processors, memory chips, displays, and other hardware.
That division isn’t going to come any time soon, however. Samsung’s Texas plant expansion got the $3.6bn go-ahead near the end of 2012, and following the upgrade is expected to still be near-monopolized pumping out A-series processors for Apple’s iOS range. OLED production is yet to deliver the flexible panels Samsung originally promised for 2012 – the company was busy enough meeting Galaxy S III buyer demand for the AMOLED screens – and the launch of the curve-friendly displays isn’t now expected until sometime in 2013.
Samsung is becoming less reactionary and more comfortable taking the lead in innovation, though despite the legal sparring, the primary victim of that maturing is not Apple but the company’s rivals in the Android ecosystem. Sony, HTC, and LG have all struggled to compete with Samsung’s rise in the sales charts, with a combination of growing brand awareness, bulging R&D investment, access to the spoils of the supply chain, and a product refresh cycle paced arguably faster than any other meaning Samsung has rapidly outpaced its platform peers. Even with billion-dollar judgements hanging over it, Samsung’s 2013 shows no sign of slowing.
Samsung’s 2012 is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
Ā© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
By Wynne Parry, LiveScience Contributor:
Though some reports suggest jellyfish are taking over the worldās oceans, long-term records of these gelatinous animals fail to show a global increase in jellyfish blooms likely caused by pollution, warming, coastal development and other human influences.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
