Now that the Apple Watch has started arriving on the wrists of users, luxury watch makers are starting to take the smartwatch trend more seriously. But instead of being worried by the rise of these highly digital timepieces, some are seeing an opportunity. Take TAG Heuer’s Jean-Claude Biver, for example. He sees the Apple Watch as a hip new trend … Continue reading
Researchers from Cornell University announced a breakthrough in transistor technology in the latest issue of the journal, Nature. The team has reportedly developed a novel and highly efficient method of producing an experimental material known as tra…
Vivo is a company not many might have heard of, but they were probably the first smartphone maker to arrive onto the market with a QHD display in the Vivo Xplay 3S, a pretty impressive accomplishment that beat many mainstream OEMs to the punch. The company is working on a new phone dubbed the Vivo X5 Pro and in the latest tease, appears to be promising what looks like a retina scanner.
Now there are many different forms of security for phones. There is your usual passcode locks and pattern locks, although fingerprint scans appear to be more common these days too, but it looks like Vivo wants to introduce a retina scanner which as the name suggests, will scan your eyes before it unlocks your device.
This supposedly makes it more secure than fingerprint scanning as there are more recognition points in your eye and also makes it harder to copy, although we suppose if someone really wanted to break into your phone, there’s no stopping them from holding you down and forcing your eyes open, but hey at least you might not have to lose a thumb or finger in the process, right?
Previously the company had also teased a 32MP front-facing camera which we speculated might employ the same technology as Nokia where the actual sensor isn’t that big, but instead it relies on the image processing software to upscale it without losing too many details. The Vivo X5 Pro is expected for an early May announcement.
Vivo Teases Retina Scanner For Upcoming X5 Pro Smartphone , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
Users who have used Microsoft Office for the desktop are probably familiar with add-ins. Essentially one could think of add-ins for Office as how extensions are for browsers where users can add more features and functionality to the app that might make their life more convenient.
The good news is that it looks like add-ins is a feature that Microsoft will be bringing to its mobile version of Office. Announced on the Office blog, Microsoft writes, “Developers play a critical role in the world of Office by building new experiences for users and customers that we could never have imagined. Developers can extend Office apps using add-ins to expose their custom capabilities to users and connect to Office 365 through open APIs.”
The add-in feature will first start by arriving on Microsoft Excel for the iPad. Microsoft has stated that this feature will be rolled out to the Word and PowerPoint iPad apps at a later point. As for Android users of the Office app, Microsoft has stated that add-ins for the Android version will be coming later and only after Office for iPad gets it.
The company did not provide any specific release dates only to say “later this year”, but hopefully Android users of Office won’t have to wait too long to get their hands on it.
Office For iPad Will Get Add-Ins Support, Android To Follow Later , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
Let’s say you’ve been eyeing a new camera but at its current price, it is a bit too expensive for your tastes so you forget about it and hope that either you can save up enough for it, or maybe hope that a sale will take place and it will become more affordable. Now there’s really no telling when a sale might happen, but thanks to a new Google Now card, you will be notified of it.
It has been noted that there is a new Google Now card that can remember products that you’ve searched for in the past, and when it detects that the item is on sale, it will then remind you of it. Sometimes we might forgot what we’ve searched for as it might not be too important so we could miss out on a sale now and then, but hopefully the new card will let more shoppers take advantage of the drop in prices.
Now while it might annoying that every product you’ve searched for will notify you, it seems that the reminder will only pop up if Google has detected that you’ve searched for it multiple times in the past which is probably a good indication that you’re seriously considering the product, otherwise why else would you bother, right?
Also presumably clicking on shopping links in search results will help Google identify that this is an item you’re interested in, versus searching for product reviews or looking for technical help on the product that you’ve purchased.
New Google Now Card Informs You When A Product Goes On Sale , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
Having such hi-tech gadgets like smartphones is all about convenience and making our lives more efficient. That being said if you’re an Android user you might want to update to the latest version of Google’s Messenger app as in the latest version, it adds a quick reply feature to it, thus allowing users to reply messages faster.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the quick reply feature does not require the user to launch the app completely. Instead a small window appears in which they are able to type their response and send it right back to the person. Alternatively the window also gives the user a choice of whether they want to launch the app itself.
However it seems that this feature is only for sending messages. If you wish to attach multimedia such as photos, you will need to launch the full app to do so, but like the feature’s name implies, this is for quick replies. This is also limited to the Google Messenger app which is basically where SMS and MMS are stored.
Previously text messages would go into the Hangouts app which only made things more confusing. That being said we have to wonder why such a feature has yet to make its way onto Hangouts, but with Messenger being updated hopefully we will see Hangouts get the same feature too in the future.
Google Messenger Updated With Quick Reply Feature , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use. 
When I told my grandma that I was among a crowd of protesters pepper-sprayed while covering the demonstration-turned-riot at Baltimore’s Mondawmin Mall on Monday, her response was blunt.
“Well, that should’ve been your answer to take yo’ ass home,” she said.
Had she been with me that day, she might very well have reacted like Toya Graham. You might know Graham as the Internet celebrity “hero mom” or through the hashtag #MomOfTheYear or from the front page of the New York Post.
Every story needs a hero, and the media and white America has found a star in Graham, the African-American mom who slapped and pulled her teenage son out of the protest Monday afternoon. But is all this praise coming from a friendly place? History, and a closer look at what’s going on, suggests not.
On a very basic level, the worship of Graham is built on a misunderstanding of her motivation. Many in the media have presumed she was furious at her son for taking part in a riot, and dished out the blows that police and pundits think young black men need to get them back in line. But that’s not what she says drove her.
Young black men, like Graham’s son, are 21 times more likely than young white men to be shot dead by police. Graham was scared for her child.
“That’s my only son and I don’t want him to be a Freddie Gray,” Graham told CBS. “Two wrongs don’t make a right, and at the end of the day I just wanted to make sure I had gotten my son home.”
My own grandmother isn’t much different from Graham. She wasn’t concerned that I was on the streets rioting. She knew that I was there as a journalist covering the situation, and she supports the calls for justice in the face of police brutality. Nana prefers peaceful protests over rioting, like Graham — and they both understand the anger and frustration of a community that turns to rioting because they feel like there’s no other way their voices will be heard. And they both fear for the lives of the black children they love. That’s why she didn’t want me to be a part of it — she didn’t want me to become another hashtag.
Knowing that Graham’s primary motivation was to keep her son safe from police violence, would so many white observers have been as sympathetic to the beating she laid out? “Let’s be honest: many white folks are reflexive critics of the greater frequency of corporal punishment in the black community. Witness the media horror at Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson beating his young son,” wrote Joan Walsh in Salon. “If Graham beat her child like that in the aisles of CVS, you can be sure somebody would call CPS.”
Indeed, American media have long condemned black parents for hitting their children. And the fact that police can be a mortal threat to black men and boys is no mystery to anybody paying attention to the news, so Graham’s fear should have been widely seen for what it was. Yet beating this child, on this day, struck a different chord in the white community. Why?
Danielle Williams, a local resident involved in the protests, caught her own wave of Internet fame by torching an MSNBC anchor for the media’s failure to focus on Baltimore before the violence. Reached by HuffPost, Williams said she thinks the mainstream media and white America are living vicariously through Graham “because she’s doing something that they wish that they could do to us and to our children.”
Because White America is living vicariously through her https://t.co/NB3MwEI3Tx
— Melech E. M. Thomas (@MelechT) April 29, 2015
Child Protective Services in Baltimore is strict, according to Williams. In any other scenario, she suggested, Graham’s disciplinary method would have brought officials to her door.
“If that had happened in any other context, [Graham] would be in a lot of trouble — especially for the words that she was using and the manner in which she chose to discipline her son,” Williams said.
The media were joined by black male authority figures in celebrating Graham’s discipline of her son — part of a ritual in which black men who’ve made it subtly condemn those who haven’t, even when they appear to praise them.
Consider Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony Batts. “I wish I had more parents who took charge of their kids tonight,” he told reporters on Monday. “Take control of your kids.”
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), a former Black Panther, took to the House floor with a picture of Graham in hand, praising the “love whopping” she gave her son:
Beside me today is an image that many people across the nation have seen and are talking about. The image of a strong mother giving her son what I would call a “love whopping” to snatch him back from the grips of senseless street violence plaguing Baltimore. As this picture demonstrates, Madame Speaker, mothers can and must be the mobilizing force to take back our streets. Mothers feel the pain of the loss of a child unlike any other. The primal scream of a mother at the death and sudden departure of her child is unlike any other outcry known to mankind.
Rush then asked America’s mothers to wear yellow on Mother’s Day “in a symbolic show of solidarity to create a ‘Mothers in Yellow’ movement to end violence that plagues this nation’s communities and neighborhoods.”
Really? That’s the answer?
The police commissioner, for one, seems to be forgetting a key point as he celebrates the hero mom: She was protecting her son from him.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
This post is adapted from an email sent by the president to the White House email list, highlighting the importance of having good teachers on the road to higher education and a brighter future. Share your own “favorite teacher” story here and with the hashtags #HpHeartsTeachers and #ThankATeacher.
I credit my education to Ms. Mabel Hefty just as much as I would any institution of higher learning.
When I entered Ms. Hefty’s fifth-grade class at Punahou School in the fall of 1971, I was just a kid with a funny name in a new school, feeling a little out of place, hoping to fit in like anyone else.
The first time she called on me, I wished she hadn’t. In fact, I wished I were just about anywhere else but at that desk, in that room of children staring at me.
But over the course of that year, Ms. Hefty taught me that I had something to say — not in spite of my differences, but because of them. She made every single student in that class feel special.
And she reinforced that essential value of empathy that my mother and my grandparents had taught me. That is something that I carry with me every day as President.
This is the simple and undeniable power of a good teacher. This is a story that every single kid in this country, regardless of background or station in life, should be able to tell. Sharing stories like these helps underline the vital importance of fighting for that reality.
Today, I honored Shanna Peeples as the 2015 National Teacher of the Year — and I’d like you to share which teacher, like Ms. Hefty, helped shape your education. You can do that here, or by using the hashtag #ThankATeacher online.
Tomorrow, I’ll travel to a local library that serves as a hub of learning in the Anacostia community of Washington, D.C. America’s librarians, like our teachers, connect us to books and learning resources that help us dream big. They help ensure that we continue learning throughout our lifetime. And that’s something that more kids ought to be able to access.
So while I’m at the library, I’ll announce new efforts to provide popular books to millions of underprivileged children and young adults around the country and connect more students to their local libraries — because we know that reading just 20 minutes a day can make a tremendous difference in a student’s success. Online, I want you to join the conversation by sharing which book was critical to making you who you are today using the hashtag #BooksForAll. (We all have one.)
And on Friday, as I work on the commencement address I’ll deliver at South Dakota’s Lake Area Technical Institute next Friday, I want you to share with me how far community college has taken you. For a number of folks on our staff here, it’s taken them all the way to the White House.
This week, we’re focusing on those fundamental people, places, and stories that made us who we are today. So whether it’s a teacher who inspired you, a book that changed you, or a college that shaped you — I want to hear from you. We’ll be responding to and sharing your responses all week long.
I’m looking forward to hearing your stories.
~ President Barack Obama
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
When Michael Singleton’s mom spotted him joining Baltimore protesters wielding a rock and wearing a mask on Monday, the world witnessed his punishment.
Toya Graham pulled at and slapped her son as news cameras rolled. Her actions show the division among people watching the chaos from outside Baltimore.
On one hand, Graham earned herself the hashtag #motheroftheyear on Twitter, and was hailed as a guiding voice for those fighting to end violence and tension in the city. On the other hand, some commentators see her story as a lightning rod for racism. Mic explains, “America wants a strong, ‘angry black woman’ keeping her ‘thug’ son in check.”
In an interview on Wednesday, Anderson Cooper sat down with both Graham and Singleton to clear the air about the incident.
See the full interviews at CNN
“I started focusing on these bricks being thrown at police officers, and I turned around, and I saw Michael,” Graham told Cooper. “I was so angry with him that he had made a decision to do some harm to police officers.”
Singleton explained that he was embarrassed by his actions, and explained why he went to the mall and picked up a brick in the first place.
“My friends were down there, my friends have been beaten by police, killed by police, so I felt I needed to go down there to show my respect,” he told Cooper. “[When I saw my mom] I was like, ‘Oh man. What is my mother doing down here?'”
[Graham] wasn’t concerned that she might be embarrassing her son.
“Not at all,” Toya Graham told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360˚… “He was embarrassing himself by wearing that mask and that hoodie and doing what he was doing.” …
The 16-year-old boy said he understood that his mother was there looking out for him.
“She didn’t want me to get in trouble (with the) law. She didn’t want me to be like another Freddie Gray,” he said.
The incident, which Cooper calls “tough love,” has become a symbol for the tension in Baltimore over the past few days, as protesters and rioters continue to clash with police over the death of Freddie Gray and others.
Gray died on April 19, days after he sustained a severe spinal cord injury following an arrest. His funeral was held on Monday, and by the end of the night, the city was on fire.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
A Baltimore protester who vanished as a CNN camera captured his curfew arrest on live TV “is ok and safe,” according to a lawyer who has agreed to defend him.
Community organizer Joseph Kent, who was seized by police late Tuesday and accused of breaking the city’s 10 p.m. emergency curfew, was discovered early Wednesday waiting to be processed in a police booking facility, Baltimore attorney Stephen Beatty said.
CNN’s cameras looked on Tuesday night as Kent walked back and forth in front of a large formation of police officers, arms held high. In the video, a police humvee slowly drives between Kent and the cameras, obscuring their view, while several officers rush out and surround him. Moments later, the vehicle drives away — and Kent has disappeared.
The video sparked a frenzy on social media, with many taking to Twitter to question Kent’s whereabouts and make sure he was okay.
“This is unreal,” read one tweet. “This is a kidnapping on national TV.”
Beatty ultimately stepped forward to search for the protestor. At nearly 1 a.m. Wednesday, Beatty reported back, “I can confirm that Mr. Kent is at [Central Booking & Intake Facility] awaiting processing. Report is he is ok and safe.”
“Due to large numbers of arrests, processing is slow,” Beatty added. “He is not even in system yet. More will be known in about 5 hours. I do not yet rep him although I will gladly if he wants me to. But everyone breathe. No longer in BPD hands. CO’s have him. Safer.”
Later Wednesday, Kent retained Beatty as his attorney. Based on a 20-minute conversation, Beatty said of Kent, “He is healthy and positive.” Kent will share his story Wednesday night on various national networks:
Press Schedule re:#JosephKent: 740pm on CNN w/Erin Burnett. Between 8 and 9 in msnbc. 10pm w/Don Lemon on CNN.
— The Big Acquittal (@BeattyLaw) April 29, 2015
Kent rose to prominence in November, when he emerged as a leader of protests in Ferguson, Missouri, over a police officer’s killing of Michael Brown.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
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