If Nestlé’s new “Iron Man” project ends up a success, your morning routine could go like this: 1.) Take a shower. 2.) Eat breakfast. 3.) Brew your very own vitamin supplements. According to Bloomberg, the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences is…
It is probably the fastest smartphone turnover ever. Just four months after Nokia, which was still really Nokia back then, unveiled the Nokia X and XL, Nokia, actually Microsoft, is announcing the new and literally shiny Nokia X2. With features that hit almost all the rumors, the X2 has shaped up to be the budget Android smartphone that Nokia should … Continue reading
Point of View has rolled out some new Windows 8.1 tablets, all of them featuring quad-core processors. That aside, the tablets come with various specs and display sizes, targeting users of different varieties with different needs. The Mobii WinTab 800W is the smallest of the bunch, offering an 8-inch display with 1280 x 800 pixels. With this slate comes the … Continue reading
Remember last week Nokia teased an announcement on their website? Based on the teaser, many had speculated that this could be a new Nokia Android phone, and sure enough it is. Nokia has since officially announced the Nokia X2 and for those who were looking forward to an Android powerhouse, it looks like you guys will be disappointed.
However for those who love the Nokia brand and just want something cheap and functional, perhaps the Nokia X2 with its price tag of €99 could be of interest to you. In terms of hardware, it’s not the most powerful but like we said, it should be good enough to get the job done. The phone will be powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon 200 processor under the hood.
It will come with a 4.3-inch WVGA ClearBlack LCD display, 1GB of RAM, 4GB of onboard storage, a microSD card slot for memory expansion and 15GB of free OneDrive cloud storage, a 5MP rear-facing camera, a VGA front-facing camera, and a removable 1,800mAh battery. It will also support dual SIM functionality, so if you own more than one line, this should come in handy.
According to Nokia, the Nokia X2 will be available “immediately” in select countries. They did not specify which countries the phone will be available in so you will have to check your local Nokia website to see if it is available.
The Nokia X2 Is Official, Microsoft Tries Its Hand At Android , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
My first meeting with Navanetham (“Navi”) Pillay was when she was studying law while at Harvard University along with Jessica Neuwirth. Neuwirth eventually became the legal advisor at Amnesty International USA and one of the producers of the Human Rights Now music tour. Our goal was to play music all over the planet and to raise awareness and a willingness to act on behalf of human rights. It was timed to support the fortieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It was 1988 and the apartheid regime still ruled South Africa. As such, we didn’t have a concert in South Africa but instead in neighboring Zimbabwe (before the rule of Mugabe’s government consolidated itself as an enemy of human rights and while it was still getting credibility as an anti-colonial freedom-fighting national government). The influence of the tour was designed to spread across what is now called the Southern Cone of Africa. Our AI-USA team also sent free tickets to anti-apartheid student leaders in South Africa so that they might attend the concert. As we assembled our team of musicians, roadies, and others for our two full DC-10 planes, we made a point of asking a team of five particular activists to join us to give direct testimony and answer questions to enable us to learn from activists and survivors of political imprisonment and the experience of a racially tabulated system of existence. One of these five was Pillay, an accomplished jurist and lawyer from South Africa. The positions and experiences that she shared during that flight have echoed ever since. My own first up-close look at South Africa came about when I was the country director of the Peace Corps in Lesotho beginning in 1977. She and her husband Gabby had hosted my stepson for a summer break so that he too could look into the eyes of apartheid and know its effects to better see how the failure to protect human rights for all meant a failure to protect human rights for any.
Pillay had had a long and groundbreaking career already before our tour had her share her experiences. Having become the first “colored” woman to open her own law practice in what was then South Africa’s Natal Province, she had been unable to enter judicial chambers due to her race classification under the regime. She spent her time defending anti-apartheid activists and fought unfair detention and the use of abusive conditions for nearly three decades. Notably, it was her representation that created the ability for political prisoners on the notorious Robben Island (including Mandela himself) to have access to their attorneys. She sued to prevent her husband from being interrogated using extra-judicial “techniques.” She was an early leader in the creation for shelters for survivors of domestic violence and helped created an equality clause in the South African post-apartheid constitution that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and sexual orientation, a clause that continues to be ahead of the typical in international jurisprudence. In 1992, she was a co-founder of Equality Now with Feryal Gharahi and Jessica Neuwirth, all lawyers who joined forces to advance the recognition that violence against women was a violation of the UDHR.
In 1995, Nelson Mandela sent Pillay to the South African High Court, which allowed her to experience the first time that she’d entered judicial chambers when she entered her own. Very quickly, she was elected by the United Nations’ General Assembly to serve on the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, where she helped to landmark the notion that war rape is a form of genocide and not “merely” a correlate to warfare. A subsequent founding member of the International Criminal Court in 2003, she resigned in 2008 to take up her position as High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Pillay was nominated in 2008 and her nomination was initially opposed by the United States due to her support for real freedom for women’s reproductive rights among other “concerns.” After such opposition was dropped she was given not only the typical four-year term but had things renewed for an additional two-year term. That term is soon coming to an end and her mark on the United Nations is difficult to adequately describe in both her systematic pursuit of “traditional” human rights in the face of notable political opposition and her willingness to pursue new ways to make implicit human rights more explicit. Without the leadership of Navi Pillay, the horrors of Sri Lanka’s discrimination against Tamils and Muslims would be much less visible, the disgusting attempts at genocide against the Rohingya in western Burma would be less covered in the media, and there would still be no United Nations recognition of the human rights imperatives for LGBT protections.
The successor for the position is Jordan’s Prince Zeid, and these are very difficult shoes for him or anyone to fill. But the United States has a not inconsiderable voice at the United Nations. Call your Representative and Senator (see www.contactingthecongress.org) now and ask them to ask Prince Zeid to support the full breadth of rights. Navi Pillay bravely and correctly read the rights implicit to gender, orientation, disability, and economic rights and the world has every right to expect all the United Nations clout to maintain that line. We hope that Zeid is prepared to be as inclusive and courageous as Pillay in mandating the truly universal nature of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for all of the planet. Afterwards, we strongly suggest that you consider a note to the United Nations’ High Office of the High Commission for Human Rights directly at infodesk@ohchr.org to thank Navi Pillay for her strong voice and support for human rights for all peoples as well as wishing the next High Commissioner the very best. We wish her hope and the very best wishes in whatever she might choose to do next and know that all the world’s peoples will find solidarity in her inclusive voice.
LONDON–When Tom Sergeant (Bill Nighy) drops in on Kyra Hollis (Carey Mulligan) totally unannounced in the revival of David Hare’s 1995 play Skylight, at Wyndham’s, he’s clearly there to fan the embers of a six-year affair that ended two years earlier. That’s when Tom’s dying wife Alice learned about what was going on, and Kyra left the household, having long told Tom she would depart immediately if Alice ever found out.
At Alice’s council-flat-like home (Bob Crowley’s cleverly claustrophobic design), Tom and Kyra go through two acts of quarreling about their various motives, alternating between reconciliation and permanent rupture, but not incidentally before Tom’s son Edward (Peter Beard) has preceded his father to Kyra’s, saying his father is in psychological trouble and needs her help.
Once Tom–snazzily dressed in slim blue overcoat, jacket, trousers and slim tie–and Kyra, garbed in practical black (Crowley’s costumes), get gabbing, what they say to each other is sometimes soothing but, with a short break for an unseen encounter in bed, mostly wounding. Tom accuses her of being grandly abusive by leaving as she had. She upbraids him for his callous attitude towards her current employment: teaching deprived children.
Since this is Hare, the dialogue is cutting cut-crystal. Tom and Kyra are smart people–Edward is also bright and nice but troubled–and so they have smart things to say about themselves and each other. Before the chatty work is over, Hare has weighted it in Kyra’s favor, in spite of giving Tom the funnier, even cute, comments. Tom also gets laughs every time he refers to a part of London audiences think amusing at their mere mention.
Because there’s so much palaver and little action–a few items, like a kitchen drawer, do get thrown–director Stephen Daldry keeps Kyra, Tom and, when he’s present, Peter on the constant trot. Tom can sit still but doesn’t like to. Kyra spends a good deal of her time preparing a meal that doesn’t get eaten. If she isn’t slicing and dicing, she often stands about listening severely with arms folded across her chest.
When Skylight premiered with Michael Gambon and Lia Williams in the roles, they seemed like stick figures expressing opposite political views. That isn’t the case here. Not that Gambon and Williams weren’t effective, but somehow Mulligan and Nighy bring convincing vitality to this stage. Nighy plays a man so intent on getting to his point that he often fails to end words in order to get on to the next point. All he lets out are, say, “Los Angel–” or “confu–.”
Because the second act of Skylight is too much a repeat of the first in terms of the focal pair’s back-and-forthing, it isn’t among the best of Hare’s 29 full-length words, but thanks to the playing and the directing here, it’s full of dramatic oomph.
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A curious thing happened when I saw the revival of The Pajama Game, at the Shaftesbury, on the only day, a matinée, I was able to get to it. I learned at picking up my press seats that both leading ladies–Joanna Riding and Alexis Owen-Hobbs–would be replaced by their understudies, Lauren Varnham as Babe Williams and Helen Ternent as Gladys.
It wouldn’t be that unusual a recurrence, were it not for specific theater lore associated with the original 1954 Pajama Game production and what happened one day when the original Gladys (Carol Haney) couldn’t go on, and her understudy did: Shirley MacLaine. Movie producer Hal B. Wallis was in the second audience for which she performed, and the rest is theater/movie history.
Wallis is gone, but if Harvey Weinstein had shown up in the orchestra the day I was there (I didn’t see him, but you never know), history could now be repeating itself for Varnham or Ternent or both. They each delivered vivacious performances in the musical for which Richard Bissell and George Abbott supplied the libretto (based on Bissell’s novel 7 1/2 Cents), for which the young songwriting of Jerry Ross and Richard Adler supplied the memorably jubilant score and for which the first reviews were deserved raves.
If The Pajama Game is new to you, it takes place at the Sleep Tite pajama factory (imagined as a dark and hulking environment by Tim Hatley), where the workers, led by grievance committee head Williams comes up against shop manager Sid Sorokin (Michael Xavier) over demands for a raise that company head Mr. Hasler (Colin Stinton) refuses to grant.
Today, the minuscule hike the employees want dates the tuner, and the loose treatment women on site receive from the men would probably be toned way down, but the start-to-finish ebullience and those songs–three of which (“Hey There,” “Hernando’s Hideaway,” “Steam Heat”) became Top 40 clicks–guarantee a good time.
Director Richard Eyre makes certain that nothing misfires, and choreographer Stephen Mear keeps the joint jumping. (Bob Fosse was the original dance master, and he remains hard to equal.) The cast is bright-eyed and sharp, especially tall, good-looking Xavier of the ringing voice; Stinton at his harrumphing, Gary Wilmot as jealous-of-Gladys time/study man Vernon Hines and Claire Machin as secretary Mabel.
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In the first act of Tim Crouch’s Adler & Gibb, just opened at the Royal Court, an American student (Rachel Redford) stomps into a pit carved from the orchestra, approaches a lectern and starts reading a paper on the fictional collaborative artists Janet Adler and Margaret Gibb (Amelda Brown). This is after the play starts, and audience members taking their seats have watched a couple of children on the stage, lying prone and drawing.
As the student haltingly reads her text, she calls for accompanying slides, at which point actors Brown and others take the stage and begin to talk. Apparently, these living slides are Margaret resisting a movie crew come to make a documentary on the artistic pair.
What Crouch is getting at, in part certainly, is a send-up of the respect shown conceptual artists, in this instance two who when asked to contribute to the Whitney Museum’s permanent collection, send a three-month old mongrel puppy.
As the actors declaim, often loudly and directly at the audience, the children hand them props and perform other duties. At one point in the puzzling first-act proceedings, Louise (Denise Gough)–who’s meant to portray Adler in the film–takes an air-filled plastic bat and savagely beats to supposed death one of the children.
Enough proceeding that pointless gesture had been off-putting, but it was then that I, who never leave a play I’m reviewing, decided to break my rule and skip the second act of a work playwright Crouch directed with Karl James and Andy Smith. It took three of them to oversee this specious material?
Bloomberg is reporting that Apple will put two new iPhones into production in July—one with a 4.7-inch display, the other with 5.5-inch screen—and both might ship by September.
After the Nokia X, X+ and XL, the Microsoft Devices team is back with its fourth Android-based budget smartphone dubbed the X2 Dual SIM, and the best part about it its €99 (about $135) off-contract price. That’s very attractive given the range’s…
When it comes to the success or popularity of a particular piece of hardware, do you count it through the number of “Likes” garnered on Facebook, or do we take a closer look at the concrete sales figures? Huawei prefers the latter option, and as of June 13, 2014, they have managed to sell off 1 million Ascend P7 smartphones. Considering how the Huawei Ascend P7 was launched earlier this May under the guise of being the latest flagship device, it is well on its way in being a success.
After all, Huawei does have dreams of shipping a whopping 80 million devices in this year alone, so the Ascend P7 certainly looks as though it is pulling its weight in this particular department. Sporting a metal body that measures all of just 6.5mm in thickness, it will be accompanied by a 5” Full HD display, Android 4.4 KitKat as the operating system of choice alongside the Emotion UI on top of it, LTE connectivity, a 13MP shooter at the back, an 8MP front-facing camera, 2GB RAM, 16GB of internal memory, a microSD memory card slot, and a quad-core 1.8GHz Kirin 910T processor.
It remains to be seen how well the Huawei Ascend P7 will do when it is made available across international markets.
Huawei Ascend P7 Hits Target Of 1 Million Units Sold In A Month , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
According to French blogger Korben, he has managed to come across a potential security exploit that will affect selected smartphones that have Mediatek chipsets inside. Apparently, these affected smartphones do seem to shut down and reset themselves after being on the receiving end of an equals symbol “=” (sans the quotation marks, of course) through a text message.
While this does not so much concern the risk of any kind of data on your smartphone being compromised, but it does make your handset a wee bit more vulnerable when it comes to remote attacks. After all, being spammed non-stop with the equals symbol will logically make the user’s smartphone unusable, not to mention the inconvenience of such a text message causing havoc on your daily communications while you are in the midst of a phone call.
If you want to find out whether your very own Mediatek-based smartphone is prone to such a compromise, then message an equals symbol to yourself. The solution is pretty simple – download an alternative messaging app that will be able to handle SMS messages instead of the stock messaging app that arrived with the phone.
The following is not an exhaustive list of affected handsets, but at least you have somewhere to begin at. They include the Wiko Darkmoon, Wiko Dark Side, Wiko Darknight, Wiko Iggy, Wiko Ozzy, Wiko Darfull, Wiko Cink King, Wiko Cink Five, Wiko Cink Peax, Wiko Cink Peax 2, Wiko Cink Slim, Alcatel One Touch Idol X, Alcatel One Touch Idol Ultra, Alcatel One Touch 997D, Alcatel One Touch Pop C3 (4033D), Alcatel One Touch S-Pop (4030D), Alcaltel One Touch Star (6010D), Zopo ZP950, Acer Liquid E 2 DUO, Fairphone, and the Archos 40 Titanium.
Select Smartphones With Mediatek Chipsets Could Be Compromised , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
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.
