Hasta La Gadget!

Over the course of the last several days or weeks, your beloved Gmail icon—that red envelope sitting comfortably in your left-most Chrome tab—may have been replaced by a hideous blue gear and equally off-putting gold wrench. It is gross. Here’s how to fix it.

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Google Science Fair 2013 came to a close yesterday, as 15 young scientists aged between 13 and 18 demonstrated their projects in front of Google’s expert panel. With over a thousand submissions worldwide, only four entrants were able to take home prizes, but it was 17-year-old Eric Chen who walked away with the biggest prize. By combining computer modeling and biological studies, Chen’s research focused on leads for a “new type of anti-flu medicine” to help fight the spread of the influenza virus. Australian Viney Kumar and Canadian Ann Makosinski took home awards for an early warning app for oncoming emergency vehicles and a flashlight that operates without batteries or moving parts, respectively. This year, voters got the chance to affect the outcome, awarding a new prize to Elif Bilgin, from Istanbul, who showed it was possible to create plastic from banana peel. Each winner took home a trophy built from Lego, as well as prizes from National Geographic and Scientific American. Chen, however, walked away with a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos Islands and his school gets both $10,000 and a Hangout with the boffins at CERN. Well deserved, we’d say.

Filed under: Science, Google

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Source: Official Google Blog

If you had this feeling that Gmail was not working according to speed despite having upgraded your data line to the fastest one possible in the market, then you are not alone. It seems that Google’s Gmail, the well known online email service has been experiencing issues which has led to delayed emails as well as the failure of downloading attachments. Google claimed that approximately 0.24% of its Gmail user base has been affected by such issues, although an update which was released later in the afternoon claimed that the number of Gmail users who were affected numbered “less than 50 percent”.

It does seem as though things have gotten worse, instead of heading in the other direction. Considering how Gmail themselves have some 425 million users, it is a rather sizeable chunk who would be left wondering what happened to their favorite email service. Well, the Gmail team has been investigate the issue throughout the afternoon, and at 3:00 p.m. ET, they claimed that the service has been restored for some users, with expectations of a full resolution within the hour, although do take that claim with a pinch of salt. Has Gmail’s downtime affected you as well as your organization in a largely negative manner, or is it a mere roadbump in the day?

Gmail A Tad Slow Today, But Issues Are Being Fixed original content from Ubergizmo.

Countries frequently amend or draft constitutions, but they can’t always find example constitutions to work from — not every country publishes its founding documents in accessible formats. So, Google’s simplifying nation building by launching Constitute, a website that puts all the world’s constitutions in one place. The tool indexes both basic details as well as policies. It’s easy to filter charters by their creation date, for example, or to find countries that protect equality based on gender. Whether you’re forming a government or just like to dabble in political science, you can try Constitute at the source link.

Filed under: Internet, Alt, Google

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Via: Google Official Blog

Source: Constitute

In our review of the Moto X, we determined that while its ClearPixel camera was decent, its performance was hit or miss. Fortunately, Motorola has taken a lot of feedback and has cranked out a software update with improvements to the camera’s performance, specifically in the areas of exposure, color accuracy and focus speed. The refresh, which is so far getting pushed out to T-Mobile phones — we expect it to roll out to other carriers as soon as each one is done testing the new firmware, though nothing is currently confirmed — appears to make a rather substantial difference in several scenarios, such as reducing noise in low-light and eliminating haze in outdoor shots. Anandtech’s Brian Klug had the opportunity to take the updated shooter for a test run and declared it to be “nothing short of the biggest [improvement] I’ve ever seen come across in an OTA update.”

In addition to the camera improvements, Motorola also threw in a few other enhancements as well. Users who have downloaded the update should expect increased Touchless Control accuracy, a fix for the choppy audio issue some have experienced in voice calls and an improvement to Moto Assist as well.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile, Google, T-Mobile

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Source: Anandtech