Motorola Wants Everyone To Build Smartphones Like Lego Kits

Introducing Project Ara, an experiment from Motorola aimed to creating smartphones made out of modular open source hardware.

Google has teased us before. Rumors swirled for months that Motorola would introduce a customizable smartphone that would let consumers decide what kind of hardware—a bigger battery, choice of processor, a better camera—they wanted. The notion of a consumer-grade open hardware platform quickened the heartbeats of geeks across the globe.

What we got instead was the Moto X, a smartphone that can be “customized” bypicking your colors, getting an engraving on the back and adding a personalized message to the startup screen. This was not the revolution in smartphone hardware we wanted.

Still, Motorola’s engineers were paying attention. Today the company announced Project Ara, an open hardware platform where users can pick and choose what type of components they want to build their smartphones.

The Module Connects To The Endoskeleton

Motorola has been thinking about Project Ara for a year. It started the campaign with a project called “Sticky,” a truck wrapped in Velcro and loaded with rooted and hackable Motorola smartphone components and 3D printing equipment. The truck would hold “MakeAThon” events with engineers who would take the raw components and build their own smartphones. 

Project Ara aims to take that concept to its logical conclusion. According to Motorola, Project Ara is a “free, open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones.”

The devices are built out of what Motorola calls endoskeletons and modules. The “endo” is the frame of the device, while the modules are the hardware, which could be just about anything that a hardware developer could dream up. Want a smartphone that specializes in barometric readings and air humidity? If someone designs and builds a module focused on sensor capabilities, you could add it to an endoskeleton—although with other modules like a CPU, storage, a camera, a radio and so forth.

To build modules for Project Ara, Motorola will make an alpha release of a “Module Developer Kit,” or MPK, within the next few months.

The Real Life Phonebloks

When I first saw Phonebloks, I thought it was a joke. An interesting one, but still a joke. Phonebloks was a video created by Dave Hakkens, a Dutch designer who envisioned a smartphone that consisted of a universal motherboard and hardware blocks that could be placed on to it like Legos to give you a highly customized smartphone. 

The video concept of Phonebloks (below) in intriguing indeed. Alas, most people dismissed it as the pipedream of a designer with too much time on his hands. 

Motorola didn’t see the video and dismiss it. The company met with Hakkens and tapped into the growing community of Phonebloks realists. And now we have Project Ara, the potential fulfillment of Hakkens’ vision.

If you know about how computers are made, it was easy to ditch Phonebloks as some weird dream. Hardware at the smartphone level is highly customized to run with mobile operating systems it is built for. If you want a camera in your smartphone, it has to be able to work with Android or iOS or Windows Phone and be compatible with the computer processor and the graphics processor and a variety of other hardware and software elements.

An open hardware platform where users could add whatever components they want willy nilly? It's a quality-assurance nightmare.

Project Ara will likely run into the problem of compatibility as open source hardware developers build new modules for the experiment. As the creator of the project, Motorola is going to have to introduce certain standards and practices to the platform to make sure all the components of an Ara smartphone play nicely with each other. The biggest mountain Ara may have to climb will likely involve getting open source module builders on the same page.

Let’s be clear: Ara is an experiment. One that could’ve been cooked up on a university campus somewhere, where students tinker with their own open-sourced-hardware smartphones, but never bring a real device to market. Students at the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass., have done similar projects.

But if Motorola can actually create a viable commercial project out of Ara, it would be the epitome of the do-it-yourself maker movement—not to mention a fulfillment of the dream sparked by those early Moto X rumors.

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Smoking really does make you look older, a twin study confirms

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery/American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

The twin on the right is a smoker; the twin on the left is a nonsmoker.

You know smoking doesn’t do any favors for your face – or your lungs, or your heart, or just about any other part of your body, for that matter! – but a new study of twins hints at the ways the habit makes you look older than you really are.

In what is perhaps the best detail of the study, researchers used the annual Twins Days Festival in Twinsburg, Ohio (the "Largest Annual Gathering of Twins in the World!") to round up the 79 identical pairs they include in the report. A panel of three plastic surgery residents compared the faces of the twins, one of which had been smoking for at least five years longer than the other.

They identified a few major areas of accelerated aging in the faces of the smoking twins: The smokers' upper eyelids drooped while the lower lids sagged, and they had more wrinkles around the mouth. The smokers were also more likely to have jowls, according to the study, which was published today in the journal Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Plastic and Reconstructive Surge / American Society of Plastic Surg

Both twins are smokers. The twin on the right smoked 14 years longer than his brother.

Smoking reduces oxygen to the skin, which also decreases blood circulation, and that can result in weathered, wrinkled, older-looking skin, explains Dr. Bahman Guyuron, a plastic surgeon in Cleveland, Ohio, and the lead author of the study.

The logic of research like this and others like it is this: If threats of cancer, heart and lung disease, or the dangers of second- and third-hand smoke aren’t enough to get people to stop smoking, or to never start in the first place, then why not try appealing to people’s vanity? (The same tactic has been used in an attempt to warn young people away from tanning.)

But if you’re currently a smoker, the point of this research is not to make you feel bad. Because stopping or cutting back on the habit now can make a difference -- in all aspects of your health, including the skin damage to your face. Even the twins who smoked just five fewer years than their siblings had younger-looking faces, the study shows. 

“We tell people, as soon as they stop smoking, the repair to not only to their skin but their lungs, their heart vessels -- it starts to repair itself,” says Dr. Robin Ashinoff, medical director of of dermatologic surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey.  

Plastic and Reconstructive Surge / American Society of Plastic Surg

The twin on the left is a nonsmoker and the twin on the right smoked for 29 years.

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New Google Glass is on the way

(CNN) -- A new version of Google Glass, the company's breakthrough entry into the world of wearable tech, is on the way. Current testers, or "Explorers," in Google's parlance, will get a chance to swap out their current models for the new ones, the company said in a Google+ post.

 The new Google Glass hardware will work with eyeglasses or shades, and include an ear bud to replace the speaker in the current model. The bone-conduction speaker, which, similar to some hearing aids, literally sends sound waves through the skull to the ear, has been called faulty by some testers. The swap begins Friday and testers will have 60 days to decide if they want new Glass. The roughly 10,000 current testers also be able to invite up to three friends into the program, which requires testers to fork over the current $1,500 price of the glasses.

 "Over the next few weeks, all Explorers will have the opportunity to invite three friends to join the program," the post said. "They'll be able to buy Glass online and can have it shipped to their home, office, treehouse or igloo. We're counting on you to get Glass to the people you think will make great Explorers."

 Google has not said when Glass will go on sale to the general public, though it is expected to be some time next year. Google Glass, worn like regular glasses, has a high-resolution display and lets wearers use voice commands to shoot photos or videos and access features like e-mail, text messaging, Google Maps, Google search and a handful of other apps. It's not clear what hardware changes will be made to make the new Glass work better with other eyeglasses, though some in the tech press were speculating that users will be able to insert prescription lenses into it.

It's possible to wear both Glass and eyeglasses currently, though many users who have tried have called it awkward. The post didn't say how the overall design of Glass will be tweaked in the next version. Looking a little bit like something out of an '80s sci-fi movie, some have said the device looks ... well ... goofy, at least on the sometimes geekish early adopters who have been sporting them.

Glass has been a groundbreaker in wearable tech, a movement that's shaping up to be the coming wave in the technology world. Samsung has weighed in with Galaxy Gear, a smartwatch that works with its Android smartphones. Google and Apple are believed to be joining the smartwatch market soon, and Pebble and Sony are just a couple of the other names that have wristwatch tech for sale.

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Sprint unveils Spark, its ultra-fast 1Gb wireless service

Spark, which will start at 50 to 60 mbps and move to 1 Gbps, arrives in five markets to select Sprint phones, including LG G2 and HTC One Max.

The HTC One Max will be one of the phones to run Sprint Spark.

(Credit: Josh Miller/CNET)

Sprint wants to get back into the network speed discussion badly.

The company on Wednesday unveiled Sprint Spark, its brand for the ultra-fast LTE service that eventually will offer a wireless connection capable of delivering data at a blazing 1Gbps. But initially, Spark will be able to deliver peak speeds of 50 to 60Mbps.

Sprint, which has fallen behind in its deployment of a faster 4G LTE network, is in desperate need of catching up with the competition. Sprint has been hampered by the shutdown of its Nextel network and complications with business deals, including the acquisition of former partner Clearwire and a takeover by Japanese carrier SoftBank. The company lags behind at a time when consumers are focusing more on the speed of their service.

Sprint earlier reported a return to profit in the third quarter, even as it lost 313,000 net customers, including a troubling loss of 360,000 contract customers. Its loss comes at a time when T-Mobile has thrown out promotion after promotion in an aggressive bid to win back customers, as Verizon Wireless and AT&T busily lock up their most valuable subscribers.

Spark is part of Sprint's bid for comeback, but it's more promise than a full-fledged service. CEO Dan Hesse demonstrated the network's ability to deliver a peak 1Gbps connection at the company's lab in Burlingame, Calif. The service, however, won't be able to deliver that kind of speed anytime soon.

Spark is available today in five markets: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Tampa and Miami, Fla. Sprint also unveiled a new set of phones compatible with Spark: the Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini, Galaxy Mega, and LG G2 -- all of which launch on November 8. The Spark-compatible HTC One Max will be available "soon," the carrier says.

Spark is able to deliver higher LTE speeds because it juggles three spectrum bands, entailing Sprint's spectrum, spectrum from its now defunct Nextel network, and spectrum taken from its acquisition of Clearwire. Because the three swaths of spectrum run at different frequencies, it was seen as a potential mess for Sprint. But the company's Network Vision upgrade plan allows its infrastructure to handle all three bands. The four new phones will be the first wave of tri-band-compatible devices.

(Credit: Sprint)

The Galaxy S4 Mini and Galaxy Mega will get a software update for tri-band compatibility shortly after launch, while the G2 will get its software update early next year.

The company said the new phones -- once updated -- would be able to get peak speeds of 50 to 60Mbps on a limited basis in those markets. However, given that this is the theoretical peak, the connection speed will likely be significantly slower. Still, it would be much faster than the standard speed of around 10Mbps that customers would see on rival LTE networks.

Sprint said the network could increase the speed over time and that it is technically possible to deliver a peak speed of 2Gbps over the air.

The company plans to deploy Spark in 100 of the nation's largest cities over the next three years. It already said it expects to cover 200 million people by the end of the year. Sprint has bumped its estimate to 250 million people by the end of 2014.

During a conference call earlier today, Hesse hinted at an announcement that would tie in with its unlimited-for-life offering. The "for life" part could be significant for customers who hang on to get Spark. Because for many people, it will be a long wait.

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Drive in Google Glass, get a ticket

(CNN) -- In what might be a first, a woman in California received a traffic ticket for wearing Google Glass while driving.

Cecilia Abadie was pulled over for speeding on Tuesday in San Diego and given an additional citation for driving while wearing her Google Glass. The officer considered the head-mounted display a monitor that was visible to the driver. Shocked, Abadie posted a copy of the ticket on Google+. Traffic laws vary state by state, but many now have broad distracted-driving laws or bans on certain monitors that could easily apply to Google Glass. The California law cited in Abadie's case is meant to prevent people from watching television while driving. V C 27602 prohibits televisions and similar monitors from being turned on and facing the driver. There are exceptions for GPS and mapping tools and screens that display camera feeds to help the driver navigate. If a device has a safety feature that limits its display to approved uses while driving, it can be allowed.

"I think the law is broad enough to say it violates the law," said San Diego attorney Mitchell Mehdy, also known as "Mr. Ticket." Mehdy has been working in traffic law for 25 years and said this is the first case he's heard of involving Google Glass. Abadie says her Google Glass was not turned on when she was pulled over, and that the officer said the screen was blocking her view. The Google Glass display is located slightly above the right eye, not directly in front of the eye. Google does warn users about running afoul of traffic laws in its Google Glass FAQ: "Most states have passed laws limiting the use of mobile devices while driving any motor vehicle, and most states post those rules on their department of motor vehicles websites. Read up and follow the law!" However, in another section on navigation, it says Glass can give turn-by-turn directions, "whether you're on a bike, in a car, taking the subway, or going by foot." Glass fans defended the technology in comments on Abadie's post, saying that a voice-activated screen close to the eye could actually be safer than trying to check a smartphone or other monitor while driving. "Glass is far safer than any other means of information delivery. It is out of your view and not distracting," said Aaron Kasten, who compared it to checking speed and other information on a car's dashboard, which requires taking your eyes off of the road. The turn-by-turn directions on Glass can be turned on with a voice command. The display will show a map view, but for extra safety the screen can be turned off while driving so there's only voice navigation.
A Google Glass spokesperson didn't address the ticket directly but emphasized responsible Google Glass usage, saying, "As we make clear in our help center, Explorers should always use Glass responsibly and put their safety and the safety of others first. More broadly, Glass is built to connect you more with the world around you, not distract you from it." Abadie could take the case to court and try to get the Google Glass portion of the ticket dismissed.
"How can this officer prove that this display was being activated or was actually on at the time and what kind of signal she's getting?" said Mehdy. State laws are always adapting to new technology, and Google Glass is still a somewhat rare sighting. The device is only available as part of a beta program and is not yet sold commercially. According to Mehdy, new technology is a tempting target for law enforcement looking for new ways to bring in money. "There's a wealth of revenue to be generated from technology. The traffic law enforcement is coming and saying wow, we've got this new incredible device and we want our piece too," said Mehdy. With a mandatory minimum fine in California is $162, this is just the beginning of more tickets for Google Glass wearers according to Mehdy. Law enforcement is increasingly enforcing distracted driving laws. During the month of April, there were more that 57,000 distracted driving tickets issued in California as part of Distracted Driving Awareness Month, according to the California Office of Traffic Safety.

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Google expands Google Glass sales, lets early users invite 3 friends each

Mountain View: Google is relying on a little social networking to put its Internet-connected glasses on the heads of more people. The expanded sales of the device known as Google Glass will come as part of an invitation-only program announced Monday. The roughly 10,000 Glass owners who began testing the device earlier this year will each be allowed to invite up to three people to buy the device. The early Glass users are primarily computer programmers and winners of an online contest conducted earlier this year.

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Growing Up Poor Changes Young Brains

Exposure to poverty in early childhood was associated with smaller brain structures later in life, but nurturing seemed to offset poverty's negative effect, researchers found.

MRI scans showed that impoverished children had smaller white  and gray matter volumes compared with normative values in early adolescence, according to Joan Luby, MD, of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and colleagues.

Poverty was also a significant predictor of left hippocampus volume (P=0.02), and left amygdala volume (P=0.01), they reported online Oct. 28 in JAMA Pediatrics.

The association of poverty with volumes of the right hippocampus and right amygdala only approached statistical significance (P=0.09 for both).

However, supportive parental language during a laboratory task conducted while children were preschool age positively influenced left and right hippocampus volumes later in life.

In addition, stress in a child's life negatively influenced brain development, but only the volume of the right hippocampus.

Regarding the influence of parental education on brain development, researchers found no effect.

"This work adds to our growing awareness that early adversity can powerfully influence human development throughout a life span," wrote Charles A. Nelson, PhD, of Boston Children's Hospital, in an accompanying editorial.

"Exposure to early life adversity should be considered no less toxic than exposure to lead, alcohol, or cocaine, and, as such, it merits similar attention from public health authorities," Nelson concluded.

There is evidence that children exposed to poverty have poorer cognitive skills, but neurobiological data in humans is sparse, Luby and colleagues said.

They investigated the effect of poverty on brain development in a group of children, ages 6 to 12, who were followed since preschool. The 145 children were recruited from a larger group of children who participated in a preschool depression study.

Parents were evaluated annually regarding stress during preschool years. After age 9, both children and parents were interviewed.

The assessment of supportive or hostile parenting was made after evaluating parent/child interactions during a task.

"The finding that the effects of poverty on hippocampal development are mediated through care-giving and stressful life events further underscores the importance of high-quality early childhood care-giving, a task that can be achieved through parenting education and support, as well as through preschool programs that provide high-quality supplementary care-giving and safe haven to vulnerable young children," the authors concluded.

The authors noted limitations of the study including an oversampling of children with depression in the original cohort, the absence of earlier imaging that would have allowed bidirectional mediation modeling, and the absence of more detailed aspects of poverty such as nutrition, parental psychopathology, and genetic factors.

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Teenagers more interested in Twitter than Facebook, study says

Facebook is starting to see a lot less face time.

About 23 percent of 8,650 teenagers surveyed in Piper Jaffray’s 26th Semi-Annual “Taking Stock with Teens” Market Research Project cited Facebook as the most important social media platform, down from 42 percent the year before.

Twitter was cited as the most important.

But Bruce Floyd, UF’s social media specialist, said he’s skeptical about the research provided in the study and needed to examine it before agreeing with the trend.

“What (teenagers) say they like is different from what they use,” he said.

Anna Cesarotti, a 19-year-old UF sociology and sustainability studies sophomore, said she hasn’t had a Facebook account for more than a year.

“I was overwhelmed by Facebook,” she said.

Cesarotti said she felt keeping up with Facebook was too much like maintenance, so she choose to delete her account before starting college.

Although the study shows teen Facebook users are down, some UF students still think there is a need for it to stay connected on campus.

Lizbeth Ramos, an 18-year-old UF exploratory freshman, said she recently reactivated her Facebook after not having one for almost three years because she felt it was necessary for college.

“Everything is done through Facebook,” she said.

Ramos said most of the organizations at UF use Facebook to advertise events, meetings and other information. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to stay up to date.

“I don’t want it to socialize. I want it for school purposes,” she said.

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Firefox Add-On Helps You Find Out Who's Watching You on the Internet

(NEW YORK) -- Most Internet users are aware of the services or sites one can visit or the browsers that can be used to track some browsing habits in one way or another.

Depending on the privacy settings that are enabled, sites and services might monitor clicks to show the user advertisements they might be interested in or collect other data for research.

But Mozilla, the open-source software company that makes the Firefox browser, wants to make it a bit easier for users to visualize what sites and third-party site services might be tracking or watching their Internet activity. Released on Thursday, an add-on for the Firefox browser called Lightbeam shines a light on the eyeballs watching users.

When installed, the user gets an interactive visualization of the sites they visit and around those are a cluster of other services that are tied into those sites. When a person clicks on pieces on the map that looks like a solar system, you more information becomes available about who might be gathering information about the user and their Web habits.

Mozilla officials said they hope the tool brings awareness to Web users about the different third-party plug-ins that are used across sites, but the company is also looking to get a bigger picture view of the Internet and how tracking works.

Of course, that's leads to another question: Is Lightbeam tracking me too? Mozilla offers a very clear toggle that allows you to turn on and off what you contribute to the service.

"You may contribute your data to our crowdsourced directory by simply turning on the share switch within the add-on," the company states on its information page. "To disable crowdsourcing, you can turn it off at any time."

You can download the add-on from here and while you're at it, it might also be a good time to make sure the "do not track" setting is turned on in your browser. In Firefox that can be found under Preferences, Privacy and then selecting the "I do not want to be tracked" setting.

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LG Electronics unveils curved smartphone in race against Samsung

SEOUL: South Korea's LG Electronics Inc unveiled a curved smartphone on Monday in a move to catch up bigger rival Samsung Electronics Co. 

Curved displays and flexible screens are the new battleground for phone makers as the screens open up possibilities that could eventually transform the high-end smartphone market. 

Curved smartphones provide a more comfortable grip than flat-screen models, but the lack of must-have features means they are unlikely to be big consumer hits anytime soon, analysts have said. Manufacturing costs also remain relatively high. 

Both Samsung and LG's curved phones are only available in the South Korean market as they seek to gauge consumer appetite. 

Samsung launched a variant of the popular Galaxy Note earlier this month as the world's first smartphone with a display slightly curved side to side. 

The model launched on Monday by LG Electronics has a vertically curved six-inch display. The company said the phone will be available from next month through South Korea's three mobile carriers. 

Its vertically curved display offers more immersive video watching experience and the phone uses a curved battery to support its form factor, LG said. 

Changing form factors of the battery as well as phone's chip board and other components remain a challenge in achieving flexible devices. 

LG is among a slew of smaller companies struggling to compete against Samsung and Apple Inc, the smartphone leaders that account for almost all the industry's profits. 

LG reported last week an 80 billion won ($75 million) operating loss from its handset division for the third-quarter due to marketing costs surrounding a smartphone launch in August. 

The company plans to increase marketing investment in the current quarter to raise brand awareness in the high-end market, which it hopes will help expand sales later in the mid to lower-end segments. 

Technology analysts and media reports say Apple is also working on a smartwatch, potentially with a curved screen, but there has been no word from the Cupertino California-based company about its plans. 

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Samsung Galaxy S5 Rumors

Device To Release With 64-Bit Exynos Processor? Samsung Announces Chipset Is Ready To Be Manufactured

The Samsung Galaxy S5 processor may be a 64-bit chipset. Samsung Exynos

As we ease into the Samsung Galaxy S5 rumor season, reports from South Korea indicate that the manufacturer has now completed development of its 64-bit system on a chip, which will soon go into production for implementation in the Galaxy S5.

Korean tech website IT Today reports that a director with Samsung’s System LSI division confirmed during a conference call on Friday that the 64-bit SoC is now ready to be manufactured. Samsung notably announced that it was in the final stages of developing a 64-bit chipset not long after Apple unveiled its iPhone 5S, which features a 64-bit processor. The A7 processor is the first 64-bit chip implemented in a smartphone; however, it may soon be a staple in future generations of mobile devices.

Samsung's 64-Bit Chipset

There is some indication that, in addition to a 64-bit architecture, Samsung’s upcoming SoC may implement a 14nm process based on ARM’s big.LITTLE platform, similar to what is currently seen on the Exynos 5410 and Exynos 5420 “5 Octa” chipsets. Using Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 cores, the octa-core chipset would allow for functionality of all cores at once, while maintaining its power-saving capability. Some reports have already referred to the chip as the 64-bit Exynos 5430 “true eight-core” processor; however, a name has not yet been confirmed by Samsung. (Some sources are also suggesting the name “Exynos 6.”)

Android's 64-Bit History

Though Apple may have spearheaded the commercialization of 64-bit computing on mobile devices, the architecture has actually long been developed on the Android platform. Android is notably based on the Linux operating system, which has had 64-bit functionality for even longer. Android based software simply needs the compatible hardware in order to adopt 64-bit support as the framework is already within its code.

More 64-Bit Chip Suppliers To Come

Meanwhile, Samsung isn’t the only manufacturer ready to capitalize on 64-bit mobile computing. Qualcomm has also announced that it may soon begin producing its own 64-bit processors. News of a new 2.5GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon (APQ8084) processor has recently begun to circulate. The SoC is believed to be apart of the Snapdragon 800 series, featuring an Adreno 420 GPU; it reportedly includes 64-bit DDR3 memory as opposed to 64-bit processing. However, details about the chipset may not be revealed until the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show, where Qualcomm typically unveils its latest products.

Samsung is well known for using its own processing components in its flagship devices as well as components from third party suppliers. Several generations of Samsung Galaxy smartphones have featured either Exynos or Qualcomm chipsets depending on their region of availability. That fact may be a hint that Qualcomm has a 64-bit processor in the works. Notably, the supplier has several tiers of chipsets, which could potentially be upgraded with 64-bit support.  

NVIDIA is another developer currently producing 64-bit computing. Its ARMv8 64-bit architecture is expected to be adopted by such chipset manufacturers as Huawei or Broadcom. Apple’s iOS 7 on the A7 SoC is also based on ARMv8-A application support.

When Will Samsung Release It's 64-Bit Powered Galaxy S5?

Current rumors suggest the Samsung Galaxy S5 could release as early as February; however, the Korean manufacturer’s usual Galaxy S series release timeline is between April and May. It may still be too early to determine a release date for the upcoming device. But the rumor mill will soon be churning at full speed with suggestions.

Do you think a 64-bit processor for the Galaxy S5 is a good move for Samsung? Let us know in the comments below.

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AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon offers Samsung Galaxy S3 for $0.01

The top three US network carriers are offering Samsung Galaxy S3 4G LTE variant with two year service contract just for a penny. Verizon Wireless and Sprint has priced Galaxy S3 at $0.01 whereas AT&T is selling it for $9.99.

Samsung’s current weapon to attack Google LG Nexus 4 is currently offered by AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile for less than a dollar with two year service contract. Without any doubt, Galaxy S3 is all round a nice phone with good features and specs which falls in budget of mid-level smartphone buyers.

The Samsung Galaxy S3 has been in the market for a while now. But with the recent Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean update, it has not just got a good boost to its speed, but also to its sale. Given to this, are the attractive deals offered by the leading U.S. carriers, viz. T Mobile, Verizon, Sprint and AT & T. And if you are looking for a place for the best deals, Amazon retains its most bankable position.

The 16GB variants of the Samsung Galaxy S3 from Sprint are available in white, purple and blue on Amazon. There’s good news for all the customers. Amazon is selling this dashing smartphone from Sprint for a mere $0.01. Yes, you got it right. Pay $0.01, and take home a brand new Samsung Galaxy S3, on a two-year contract. But if you are already a Sprint customer, then you will have to let loose $19.99 out of your pocket for the purchase. However, if you intend to buy it without a service plan, you can simply shell out $549.99 to get a brand new Sprint Samsung Galaxy S3 from the Amazon.

Well this sumptuous offer isn’t just on Sprint. The 16GB variant of the Samsung Galaxy S3 from AT&T is on offer for a meager $9.99 to new customers on a two-year contract. However, just like Sprint, if you are an old customer coming for an upgrade, you will have to pay $19.99. The colors in stock right now are white and blue, though I’m personally missing AT&T Samsung Galaxy S3’s red color. However, you get the device for $499.99 without a service agreement.

If you are more of a Verizon fan, then check out the interesting Verizon deals on Amazon. The device is available in white, black and blue. The 16GB models with expandable microSD slot up to 64GB could be yours for $549.99 without a service plan. However, you can also take home a new Samsung Galaxy S3 for just $0.01 on a two-year service contract. The amount may vary up to $39.99 depending on the service agreement.

T-Mobile, meanwhile, no new Samsung Galaxy S3 deals from T-Mobile are available on Amazon currently, except for the used-products sale. So, if you are looking for a striking deal on Amazon for this dashing smartphone with 4.8-inch Super AMOLED touch-screen display, 8-megapixel rear camera, 1080p full HD video-recording, 1.5 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, an upgraded Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Operating System, 16 GB internal storage with expandable MicroSD card slot, and giving nine hours of talk-time, you will have to skip considering T-Mobile as of now.

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Samsung: Galaxy S 4 mini Available in U.S. in November

Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) said that the Samsung Galaxy S 4 mini, a compact smartphone featuring some of the Galaxy S 4 experiences, will be available in the U.S. beginning in November.

In a release, Samsung noted:

The Galaxy S 4 mini is just 4.9in x 2.4in and is packed with Samsung flagship experiences like WatchOn, S Beam and advanced camera features.

"Samsung continues to provide a wide range of products to fit consumers' needs," said Gregory Lee, president of Samsung Mobile. "The Galaxy S 4 mini continues that commitment by bringing the paramount features of our flagship Galaxy S 4 smartphone to a smaller, more compact form factor."

Outstanding Galaxy Features:

The Galaxy S 4 mini has some of the best software features from the Galaxy S 4 in a compact form factor to enrich the user experience.

-Intuitive Camera Interface: The Galaxy S 4 mini's 8-megapixel camera has zero shutter lag allowing users to document special moments without delay. The Galaxy S 4 mini is equipped with the familiar and easy-to-navigate user interface found on the Galaxy S 4 and supports numerous shooting modes such as Beauty Face, Best Photo, Sound & Shot, Panorama and more to enhance photos taken by even the most novice photographer.

-WatchON: Control your television using the Galaxy S 4 mini as a remote control. Discover a rich TV viewing experience with a Smart Remote that is functional with any IR capable TV or Set Top Box. Users can share content from the Galaxy S 4 mini to a TV effortlessly, as well as look for something to watch in a new way that lets you browse by genre, search by title or receive recommendations based on your interests.

-Easy Mode: Helps smooth the transition for first-time smartphone owners by simplifying the home screen layout, camera, calendar, messaging and the internet browser to make the phone easy to navigate. Once a user is more comfortable with their Galaxy S 4 mini, they can easily switch back to the standard home screen interface.

-Simple Sharing: Quickly and easily transfer large files, such as videos and documents, to other Galaxy phones with S Beam. Touch the back of the Galaxy S 4 mini to any S Beam enabled phone and share without needing a Wi-Fi connection or cell signal. Users are able to simultaneously enjoy music, photos, documents and games with friends through the Group Play function.

The Galaxy S 4 mini is designed with a beautiful 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED (960 X 540) display with 256DPI. The Galaxy S 4 mini will run on Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) and includes a 1.7 GHz dual- core processor and 1.5GB of internal RAM. It is powered by a removable 1,900 mAh battery and features an expandable memory of up to 64GB to complement the 16GB of standard onboard storage.

The Galaxy S 4 mini will receive a software update soon after launch and will be compatible with Galaxy Gear, Samsung's first wearable smartphone experience. Galaxy Gear extends the Galaxy S 4 mini experience to your wrist and enhances everyday moments with real time updates for quick and convenient access.

The Galaxy S 4 mini comes in Black Mist and White Frost color options, and will be available beginning next month. Wireless carriers will announce their specific availability, colors and timing. AT&T, Sprint, Verizonand U.S. Cellular will carry the Galaxy S 4 mini.

Accessorize the Galaxy S 4 mini with the S-View Flip Cover, a specially designed flip cover that has a clear window to view a text message or missed call notification, answer or reject a call, and view the battery status. Sold separately, the S-View Flip Cover comes in black and white color options to add style - while protecting the device and providing privacy. Flip Covers are also available without the S-View window in an array of colors including black, white, light blue, and pink.

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Computer cracks CAPTCHAs in step toward artificial intelligence

Oct 28 (Reuters) - A technology start-up said on Monday that it had come up with software that works like a human brain in one key way: it can crack CAPTCHAs, the strings of tilted, squiggly letters that websites employ to make users "prove you are human," as Yahoo! and others put it.

San Francisco-based Vicarious developed the algorithm not for any nefarious purpose and not even to sell, said co-founder D. Scott Phoenix.

Instead, he said in a phone interview, "We wanted to show we could take the first step toward a machine that works like a human brain, and that we are the best place in the world to do artificial intelligence research."

The company has not submitted a paper describing its methodology to an academic journal, which makes it difficult for outside experts to evaluate the claim. Vicarious offers a demonstration of its technology atshowing its algorithm breaking CAPTCHAs from Google and eBay 's PayPal, among others, but at least one expert was not impressed.

"CAPTCHAs have been around since 2000, and since 2003 there have been stories every six months claiming that computers can break them," said computer scientist Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University, a co-developer of CAPTCHAs and founder of tech start-up reCAPTCHA, which he sold to Google in 2009. "Even if it happens with letters, CAPTCHAs will use something else, like pictures" that only humans can identify against a distorting background.

CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. They are based on the standard set in 1950 by British mathematician Alan Turing in 1950: a machine can be deemed intelligent only if its performance is indistinguishable from a person's.

CAPTCHAs serve that function: in order to sign up for free email, post comments, buy tickets or other online activities, more than 100,000 websites require users to prove they are human by deciphering the squiggly letters, which are often blurred, smeared and cluttered with dots and lines.

In practice, someone trying to break CAPTCHAs in order to do what a site is trying to deter - sign up for umpteen email accounts, for instance - can easily hire someone to accomplish that. "Most CAPTCHAs now are broken by paying people in Bangladesh to do it manually," said computer scientist Greg Mori of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, an expert on machine learning and computer vision. "For 50 cents an hour, you can get someone to break seven per minute."

DIGITIZING BOOKS?

Developing software to break CAPTCHAs would in theory speed that up exponentially. Vicarious said its algorithm achieves success rates of 90 to 97 percent, depending on the difficulty of the CAPTCHA; a CAPTCHA scheme is considered broken if a machine can break just 1 percent of the ones it generates.

That makes "text-based CAPTCHAs no longer effective as a Turing test," the company said in a statement, meaning that CAPTCHAs can no longer be used to tell human from machine.

That might be beneficial, experts said. Google's reCAPTCHA uses words from old books and other publications that have been optically scanned but are difficult to digitize because they are so degraded. "If you can actually solve reCAPTCHAs, you can digitize old books more easily," said Mori.

In addition, the algorithm Vicarious uses to break CAPTCHAs might be deployed more widely.

"If they've done it, it could improve the reliability of optical character recognition like that used in banks to scan checks and by the IRS (Internal Revenue Agency) to read scanned documents," said Karl Groves, an independent website developer who for years has tracked claims about breaking CAPTCHAs.

The feat required relatively tiny amounts of data and computing power, Vicarious said, instead using algorithms that mimic the perceptual and cognitive abilities of the human brain.

The company has described only in general terms what it hopes to use artificial intelligence for, describing its goals as building a vision system modeled on the human brain and developing human-level artificial intelligence based on what it calls a "recursive cortical network," for applications in robotics, medical image analysis, image and video search, and other fields.

That has been sufficient to attract more than $15 million in funding from investors including Facebook co-founder and Vicarious board member Dustin Moskovitz. In a statement, he said, "We should be careful not to underestimate the significance of Vicarious crossing this milestone," adding that the company is "at the forefront of building the first truly intelligent machines."

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