Hasta La Gadget!

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) was unsuccessful in her 2008 run for the vice presidency, but a new book puts her in the top spot, imagining a world where Palin is president of the United States.

“Christian Nation,” a book by author Fred Rich, describes a world in which John McCain was victorious in the 2008 election over Barack Obama. In the novel, President McCain passes away, leaving America in the hands of Palin.

“If somebody like Sarah Palin, who holds so firmly to this conviction that America is and should be a Christian nation, what would happen if she actually had the power to implement it?” Rich said of his book, According to Politico.

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Vine has just added some new features. The camera tools have been improved, and discovery of interesting clips inside the app has been made easier.

ShotSpotter in use on patrol in Milwaukee.

(Credit: ShotSpotter)

We’re all excited that the United States of America is finally turning 237 years old this Fourth of July, but it’s highly advisable that you keep your gun in your holster and all bullets out of the air when celebrating this week.

Celebratory Independence Day gunfire is a bad idea, and not just because of the potential of, you know, killing someone. This week, police departments in many cities are also armed — with technology that can pinpoint the location of such well-meaning but ultimately dangerous gunshots.

ShotSpotter uses a system of sensors that listens across a wide area, such as a city, for gunshots and then triangulates the location of each shot fired and notifies local authorities that subscribe to the service.

ShotSpotter uses a combination of filters and human ears to distinguish between gunshots and the bang of fireworks on the Fourth of July. That means ShotSpotter has become something of a Swiss Army Knife for law enforcement to track not only celebratory gunfire but also the use of illegal fireworks around Independence Day.

Using ShotSpotter data from six law enforcement agencies in the San Francisco Bay Area, the company found that last year, 18 percent of July gunfire took place on July 4 and 5. The amount of celebratory gun… [Read more]

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Proclaim your independence with this laser Gatling gun
San Francisco protests the NSA spying program in July 4th march
Google’s July 4th doodle celebrates dogs, not controversy
Reddit, Mozilla, EFF and more join July 4th anti-NSA protests

We usually associate Boston University with brain studies and bat-chasing UAVs; we’ll have to add technology patent lawsuits to the list. Following similar claims versus the likes of Amazon and Samsung, the university has sued Apple for allegedly infringing on a 1997 patent for making gallium nitride thin films used in semiconductors. The university wants both financial compensation (likely the real objective) and a ban on US sales of the purportedly offending iPad, iPhone 5 and MacBook Air. Neither side is commenting on the case, although we suspect that it will end with a whimper, not a bang. Like many big tech firms, Apple tends to fight patent lawsuits when it expects to win, and settle out of court when it doesn’t. We’d add that the patent expires in 2015 — a Boston University victory would have relatively little effect on Apple’s future.

Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Tablets, Apple

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Via: AppleInsider

Source: Boston Herald

This afternoon several sources have come forth all at once speaking on how Motorola’s next hero device, the Moto X, will be able to be customized. The first and most visually interesting of the collection comes from an in-factory snapshot which shows three of the total 16 different colors set to be available for the device – green, pink, and purple, each of them in a bit of a pastel tone.

The photographer here delivers news through source NWE that additional tones will include blue, purple, green, and additional blues – amongst others, of course. This bit of customization will ride alongside additional choices of inner configurations based on the consumers “needs” – aka wants.

Meanwhile Motorola has silently launched a User Information Page along with the full-page-advertisement it had teased yesterday. As this launch will surely – according to the poster – be a patriotic one, we’ll be expecting more solid terms of connection by tomorrow.

The team at Motorola has also had a logo change-up in the past few days – shown a bit earlier than this campaign complete with its brand new color ring. This ring is obvious evidence of some of the additional colors users will be able to choose from with the launch of the Moto X, a device Motorola also promises will be assembled wholly inside the borders of the USA.

This release is the first that Motorola is suggesting will be one under the Google umbrella, the company having had several projects still in the works at the time of the big G’s acquisition of their company. Motorola continues to operate as a separate entity, but Google does, indeed, have quite a bit of influence over their future.

The patriotic tone of the first advertisement, too, fits in extremely well with the Assembled in the USA guarantee.

According to ABC News, further customizations will include color choices in not only the back cover, but the trim of the phone as well. Then as a bit of a bonus, users are said to be able to upload a photo to the website from whens the phone can be ordered and said photo will be delivered to the user as the machine’s background.

It would appear that this device will be delivered to some carriers with the name Moto X, but with Verizon specifically with a different name: DROID Ultra.

It’s not immediately clear if Verizon’s iteration of the device will have the same collection of customization abilities as the rest, but we’ll be looking forward to backside engraving, that’s for certain.

Moto X color cases leak: customizations pour in [UPDATE] is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
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