A lot of students struggle year in year out to pass Jamb exams. The mention of the word JAMB alone gives some students the jitters because they believe that it’s an examination that is difficult....
While
it is possible to run a successful business without a blog, it sure is handy to
have hundreds of potential customers milling around your blog waiting to hear
your witty status updates and see behind-the-scenes photos of your life. While
you’re in the stages of starting up, take a little time each day and devote it
to writing blog posts and getting a wicked-awesome blog designed. Trust me, it comes
in handy. Here’s how:
1.
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Try not to view your
competitors as your evil arch enemies. They‘re just down-to-earth creative
girls like you, on a mission similar to yours! Embrace that. Go out for a
coffee with them, skype them, start a Google + hangout with them and learn from
them. If they are swamped with work one month, they may refer someone they
can’t work with to you. Referrals from friends in the business is a great way
to get work.
2.
MEETING POTENTIAL CLIENTS
Many of my design clients
were my blog readers first. How exactly do you turn a reader into a client?
Self promotion! Let your readers know (but not in a spam kinda way) what you
do, provide them with links to your shop/portfolio and give
Your blog content is the star of the
show, right? Those beautiful photos, helpful tips, quick tutorials… They are
the things you want to draw readers in to and hook them on. So why are you
overshadowing your content with a messy sidebar?
Your sidebar should align with your
blogs goals and priorities. It should look simple and clean instead of
cluttered and confusing!
10 things you don’t need in that
sidebar of yours:
1. A list of blogs you love. It’s nice to support bloggers you love by linking to them,
but the hard truth is that readers will click those links, leave your site, and
most likely forget to return because they’re totally transfixed by the blog
you’ve pointed them to.
2. A section on ‘things you love’, like t-shirts from Target and sunnies from Modcloth.
Unless you’re a fashion blogger who is being paid to promote these items in
your sidebar, you have to ask yourself if it’s really necessary.
3. A mini slideshow of your
Instagram feed. I totally get why people add this
and it does add personality and realness to your blog, to some degree.
But if you don’t use Instagram much, then please remove it from your sidebar.
It distracts readers from more important things, like signing up for your
newsletter or following you in a reader!
4. A never-ending list of
categories. Keep it simple and stick to 5 or 6.
5. A never-ending list of archive
links. If you’ve been blogging for a long
time, then have a drop down archive option to keep your sidebar looking simpler
(and a lot shorter!)
6. Counters. How many people visit your site is of no concern to your
readers, so think about removing counters from your sidebar and keeping up with
stats through Google Analytic instead.
7. A disclaimer. I personally prefer to put disclaimers in the blog footer
and keep the extra sidebar space for more useful things, like follow buttons or
social media buttons!
8. A social media plugin to a social
media site you barely ever use.
If you don’t use Twitter but you have a Twitter feed in your sidebar, remove it
to avoid wasting your reader’s time. Find a social media site that you use
regularly and steer your readers in that direction. It’ll benefit them a ton
more!
9. Embedded media. Embedding too many things (like YouTube videos) in your
sidebar can really slow down your blog. And what do people do when you site
takes longer than 10 seconds to load? They leave, sadly enough.
10. Blog awards that no one has
heard of. Remove anything like this from your
blog because it gives a ‘naive and amateur’ impression. It’s nice to have and
give blog awards, but most people will sadly not pay any attention to them.
Unless you were awarded by Teen Vogue or ProBlogger or something. Then maybe
you can keep those up there. ;)
Have you ever tried to create a new Facebook App for your website which doesn't have HTTPS support?
Even you can't create a Facebook Page tab for pointing to your website without HTTPS support! The working of this trick is described in the following picture.
I am going to show you how to create any Facebook app for your website without HTTPS support.
For that you need to create a Google site and embed an iframe in it to point to your website.
This is because Google site provides HTTPS support.
Step 1:
Create a Google site. If you already have a Google site, skip this step. Sign in to your Google account and go to Google site (Follow the link in new tab).
Click on "Create site".
Choose a Blank template.
This is because you are going to embed only an iframe that points to
your website. Hence a good looking template for your Google site does
have no deal for you.
After choosing a blank template, enter a site name and click on "Create". Step 2:
Once your site is created, edit the home page.
Go to Insert->More Gadgets and choose iframe widget as shown below.
Now enter your website url in the URL field.
Save the changes and test your newly created google site.
Step 3:
If you did the above two steps correctly you night see your website home page inside the newly created site.
Also note that header and footer of google site are visible.
Press 'u' key, and the following dialog is displayed.
You can hide the header and footer easily. Just un-check all options as shown above. Step 4:
Create a new app for Facebook with your new Google website. Go to Facebook Developer Page.
In case You have been trying to download from Youtube For A very Long Time, Here Is an Application that will help you download video and extract music without any stress. it called YouTube Fisher is one of the Portable YouTube video downloader. It's an open source project.
I mentioned it is portable because:
Small in size (44 kB) only but yet rich in features.
In this blog post, I show you how to add TinyURL shorten-er widget for website or Blog. This widget will shorten any URL without any page load or registration / login. And it's free. And the best part is this widget is also available for Wordpress sites and blogger platform.
People who visit your site enters their long URL and gets their short URL instantly. No need to open any new tab, or browser window or any form for registration. ScreenShot:
President Goodluck Jonathan on Thursday
nominated the Corps Marshal of the Federal
Roads Safety Corps, Mr.
Osita Chidoka, as minister representing Anambra State on the Federal
Executive Council.
He also nominated a lecturer in the Department of Political Science
at the University of Abuja, Dr. Suleiman Olanrewaju Abubakar, as a
minister to represent Kwara State at the FEC.
Jonathan stated this in a letter addessed to the Senate President, David Mark, which was read at the plenary.
The President, in another letter, also asked the upper chamber to
approve the nomination of the current Acting Director-General of the
Nigerian Pension Commission, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amaju, as the
substantive DG of the agency.
Investigations by our correspondent revealed that the nominees might be screened by the Senate on Wednesday next week.
Police in Pader district have arrested five people suspected to be promoting the act of homosexuality in the district.
The suspects were arrested in the period of one week after the tip
off by the locals, who accused the suspects of moving within the schools
in the district, promoting the practice which was early this year
criminalized by the Anti-homosexual Act 2014.
It’s alleged that the suspects have been carrying out clandestine
movements in both primary and secondary schools in the district luring
the pupils and students into the practice.
The OC Pader Central Police Station, Mr Romeo Ojara Onek, confirmed
the arrest, adding that police is still investigating the matter.
He said among the arrested suspects include two businessmen, one
teacher, and two students who are allegedly recruiting and promoting the
act.
“The suspects’ medical report is out and their files have been
forwarded to the Resident State Attorney for advice, pending
prosecution,” Mr Onek said.
Last year one of the teachers in the district reported a similar case to Pader district authorities.
This comes barely a month after the United States announced it had
cut aid to Uganda and cancelled a military exercise in response to the
Anti-homosexuality law that allegedly imposes harsh penalties on
homosexuality.
The new law, signed by President Yoweri Museveni in February this
year, imposes jail terms of up to life for “aggravated homosexuality”
which includes homosexual sex with a minor or while HIV-positive.
Widely condemned by donor countries, the law also criminalizes
lesbianism for the first time and makes it a crime to “help” individuals
engage in homosexual acts.
A Lagos-based human rights lawyer, Mr. Bamidele Aturu, is dead.
A source close to him said the vibrant legal mind died of high blood pressure on Wednesday. He was age 49.
Aturu, who was reportedly rushed to the
Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja in the early hours of
Wednesday, was confirmed dead by medical personnel later in the day.
The late Aturu obtained a first degree in
Law from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. Until his
death, he was the Principal of Bamidele Aturu and Company in Lagos.
Commenting on the sad incident, a Lagos-based lawyer, Mr. Festus Keyamo, said he received the news as a shock.
“I just heard it but I am still trying to
confirm; I was told he died of high blood pressure-related ailment. It
is sad and I’m still in shock,” he said.
Another lawyer, Mr. Fred Agbaje said he was speechless.
Another legal luminary, Chief Anthony
Idigbe (SAN), who told one of our correspondents that he had yet to
confirm the death, said he wished it was not true.
Meanwhile, lawyers and rights activists have expressed shock over the death of the human rights lawyer.
A former Chairman of the Nigerian Bar
Association, Mr. Monday Ubani, who sounded too shocked to talk,
described Aturu as the best Nigerian, “whose activism was not targeted
at attracting public attention or government’s appointment.”
Others such as the Chairman, Coalition
Against Corrupt Leaders, Mr. Debo Adeniran, the National Coordinator,
Legal Defence and Assistance Project, Mr. Chino Obiagwu and the Chairman
of the Civil Society Network Against Corruption, Mr. Lanre Suraj,
simply said they were too shocked to comment on his death in separate
text messages to one of our correspondents on Wednesday.
A female patient in the US
has grown a nose on her back following a failed experimental stem cell
treatment that was intended to cure her paralysis. The nose-like growth,
which was producing a “thick mucus-like material,” has recently been
removed as it was pressing painfully on her spine. If you ever needed an
example of the potential perils of stem cell therapy, and just how
little we actually know about the function of stem cells, this is it.
It’s also notable that this stem cell therapy was carried out in a
developed country, as part of an approved trial (apparently unwanted
growths are more common in developing nations with less stringent
medical safeguards).
Eight years ago, olfactory stem cells were
taken from the patient’s nose and implanted in her spine. The stem cells
were meant to turn into nerve cells that would help repair the woman’s
spine, curing her of paralysis. Instead, it seems they decided to do
what they were originally meant to do and attempt to build a nose. Over a
number of years, the nose-like growth eventually became big enough and
nosy enough to cause pain and discomfort to the patient. As reported by New Scientist, “surgeons
removed a 3-centimetre-long growth, which was found to be mainly nasal
tissue, as well as bits of bone and tiny nerve branches that had not
connected with the spinal nerves.” [DOI: 10.3171/2014.5.SPINE13992 - "Autograft-derived spinal cord mass following olfactory mucosal cell transplantation in a spinal cord injury patient"]
As with any experimental
procedure, there is always a fairly good chance that something will go
wrong. In a 2010 clinical trial, 20 paralyzed patients were treated with
olfactory stem cells; 11 showed some signs of recovery, four had “minor
adverse events,” one developed meningitis, and in one case the
paralysis got worse. Jean Peduzzi-Nelson, a stem cell researcher, says
most patients undergoing the olfactory stem cell treatment have a
“remarkable recovery,” with “less than 1%” growing an unwanted snotty
appendage. [Read: Researchers create brain-computer interface that bypasses spinal cord injury paralysis.]
What went wrong, then? Basically, at the top of your nasal passages there is the olfactory mucosa.
This region contains all of the machinery for picking up odors, and the
neurons for sending all of that data off to your brain’s olfactory bulb
for processing. Cells from this region can be easily and safely
harvested, and with the correct processing they behave just like
pluripotent embryonic stem cells that can develop into many other cell
types. These olfactory stem cells could develop into cartilage, or mucus
glands, or neurons. The researchers obviously wanted the latter, to
cure the patient’s spinal nerve damage — but seemingly they got it
wrong, and thus she sprouted a second nose. Moving forward, newer
olfactory stem cell treatments have an “isolation” stage to prevent this
kind of thing from happening. [Read: The first 3D-printed human stem cells.]
It’s
important to note that medicine, despite being carried out primarily on
humans, is still ultimately a scientific endeavor that requires a large
amount of trial and error. In the western world, it’s very, very hard
to get a stem cell therapy approved for human trials without lots of
animal testing. Even then, the therapies are often only used on people
who have “nothing to lose.” Obviously it’s hard to stomach news like
this, and I’m sure that stem cell critics will be quick to decry the
Frankensteinian abomination created by these scientists. But when you
think about the alternative — no advanced medicine and significantly
reduced lifespans for billions of people — then really, such
experimental treatments are nothing to sneeze at.
After years of facing
criticism for its labor practices, Foxconn is working to solve the
problem. Will living conditions be completely revamped, and employees
paid fairly? Don’t be ridiculous! Instead, Foxconn wants to replace
those pesky workers with ten thousand robots. These robots alone could
manufacture hundreds of millions of iPhones every year — potentially
eliminating the need for most of the workforce. This rollout of
“Foxbots” might solve Foxconn’s current PR problem, but will it create a bigger uproar when thousands of workers lose their jobs to robots?
At
a shareholder’s meeting held recently, Foxconn’s Terry Gou explained
that these so-called “Foxbots” are almost ready for prime time. These
machines will be installed in at least one large-scale factory in the
near future, and we can most assuredly expect more to come once the
kinks have been worked out. Interestingly, Chinese site IT Home is
reporting that Apple — the company most associated with Foxconn — will
be the first company to use these new robots. If that’s true, maybe that rumored 4.7-inch iPhone 6 we’ve heard so much about will be assembled exclusively by robots.
Apparently, each of these
machines cost between $20,000 and $25,000, and they’ll be able to pump
out 30,000 units in a year’s time. After doing some back-of-the-envelope
calculations, it seems that 10,000 of these devices could churn out
over 820,000 devices in a single day. With numbers like that, it’s no
surprise that Foxconn is looking to automate its assembly line.
Of course, this doesn’t spell the immediate end of factory labor. In 2011, we were told that Foxconn would have upwards of a million robots in its factories
by 2014, but we’ve yet to see any official headcount. Since Foxconn
isn’t bragging about its total number of robots, it’s safe to assume
that those early estimates were overly optimistic. As it stands, Foxconn
employs well over a million people in factories all over the world, and
it’s just not practical to fire all of those people just yet. The human
touch is still needed in many aspects of production, but how long is
that going to last? The fields of robotics and artificial intelligence
are growing incredibly fast, and it seems inevitable that number of
factory jobs will slowly dwindle to nothing over the next few decades.
It’s
not all bad news, though. Robotic labor will most certainly reduce
cost, increase efficiency, and prevent exposure to unsafe working
conditions. Electronics will be even more affordable as robots take over
more jobs, and you won’t have to worry about supporting the sketchy labor practices found abroad. Unfortunately, that will likely come at the cost of millions of jobs across the entire industry.
First robots stole our jobs
here on Earth — and now Google and NASA want to do the same to our
astronauts. Later this week, Google and NASA will launch some Tango
smartphone-powered SPHERES robots to the International Space Station. As
their name suggests, SPHERES are spherical robots that will float
through the halls of the ISS, powered by small CO2 thrusters, performing
chores that would normally be carried out by astronauts. Tango,
Google’s sensor-laden prototype depth-sensing smartphone, will be the
brain of each robot. In the future, the SPHERES robots could even
perform risky tasks outside the ISS in the deep, dark, never-ending
expanse.
On July 11, an Orbital Sciences unmanned Cygnus spacecraft will
launch atop an Antares rocket. Orbital Sciences, like SpaceX, has a
commercial contract with NASA to ferry supplies to and from the ISS.
Cygnus, like SpaceX’s Dragon, will carry a bunch of goodies for the
astronauts aboard the ISS — including a handful of SPHERES.
In
true science-loves-backronyms-a-bit-too-much style, SPHERES stands
for Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental
Satellites. As you can see in the photos throughout this story, each
robot is about the size of a bowling ball, with two protrusions for a
CO2 canister and the Tango smartphone.
NASA has sent SPHERES to the ISS before, but all they could really do
was move around with their small CO2 thruster. With the addition of a
Tango “brain” the hope is that the robots will actually be able to
assist astronauts on some tasks, or even completely carry out some
mundane chores, freeing up astronauts to work on other things.
In
recent years there has been a marked shift towards the use of
off-the-shelf hardware in space (and military) applications. This is
partly due to tighter budgets (a $1,000 digital camera is a damn sight
cheaper than the tens-of-thousands you would spend on a bespoke camera),
and partly because modern technology is just really darn good. “We
wanted to add communication, a camera, increase the processing
capability, accelerometers and other sensors [to the SPHERES]. As we
were scratching our heads thinking about what to do, we realized the
answer was in our hands,” Chris Provencher, SPHERES project manager told
Reuters. “Let’s just use smartphones.”
Initially NASA’s SPHERES team
just used normal smartphones from Best Buy, but they didn’t have the
necessary capabilities to move around smoothly and unaided. Now,
however, they’ve moved to Google’s Tango smartphone, which has a
Kinect-like sensor on the back that can quickly and accurately create a
3D map of its surroundings. Google and NASA have already tested the
smart, Tango-equipped SPHERES aboard a zero-g test flight — and now it’s
time to actually ship three of them up to the ISS.
As these early
SPHERES aren’t equipped with tools, they will mostly just fly around
the ISS, testing out their software. The eventual goal is to have a
fleet of bowling ball robots flying around in formation, fixing things,
docking to things (and moving them around), and autonomously looking for
things (a mislaid spanner, lost satellites, etc.) This would free up
astronauts to do other, more important things — and if SPHERES can also
perform EVAs (extra-vehicular activity, space walks), then the risk of
being an astronaut would be significantly reduced.
If you're tired of
boring links, text and images on your Blogger sidebar, surprise site
visitors with a video. YouTube, the online video sharing site, allows
users to grab the HTML video code from any video and embed it on a Web
page. By adding an HTML gadget to your blog, you can paste YouTube video
code into the gadget and insert the gadget into your sidebar.
If you're tired of
boring links, text and images on your Blogger sidebar, surprise site
visitors with a video. YouTube, the online video sharing site, allows
users to grab the HTML video code from any video and embed it on a Web
page. By adding an HTML gadget to your blog, you can paste YouTube video
code into the gadget and insert the gadget into your sidebar.
If you're tired of boring links, text and images on your Blogger sidebar, surprise site visitors with a video. YouTube, the online video sharing site, allows users to grab the HTML video code from any video and embed it on a Web page. By adding an HTML gadget to your blog, you can paste YouTube video code into the gadget and insert the gadget into your sidebar.
Instructions
1
Open your browser and navigate to YouTube.com. Choose from a list of recommended videos or do a search for a specific video. Click the video and it begins to play. Click "Pause" to pause the video.
2 Click the "Share" button beneath the video, then click "Embed." A text box containing HTML code appears. Click the text box to highlight the text, then right-click the highlighted text and click "Copy." Windows copies the HTML to the system clipboard.
3 Visit your Blogger account page. This page contains a list of your current blogs. Each blog name appears in a separate section. Each section contains a "Design" link associated with that blog.
4 Click the "Design" link in one of the sections. The "Add and Arrange Page Elements" page opens.
5 Click the "Add a Gadget" link located on the sidebar to open the "Add a Gadget" window. Click "HTML/JavaScript" and the "Configure HTML/JavaScript" pop-up window opens. This window contains a "Title" text box and a "Content" text box.
6
Type a title for your video in the "Title" text box, then right-click anywhere inside the "Content" text box.
7
Click "Paste" to paste the HTML you copied from the YouTube site. Click "Save," then click "Preview." Your blog opens in a preview tab or window and displays the YouTube video in the sidebar.
Maybe you’ve heard: Apple
CarPlay and Google Android Auto will replicate the richness of your
smartphone onto the car’s big LCD display, with appropriate safeguards
such as no videos while moving. If that’s what you heard, adjust your
enthusiasm downward. What you’ll see at year’s end on the first CarPlay
cars is a nice step forward — but it’s a baby step forward.
Here’s
what we know about Apple CarPlay after seeing demos on several brands
including Hyundai (main photo). Volvo and Mercedes-Benz. You can make
calls, check contacts, and play music with CarPlay. But — headslap — you
can do that now without CarPlay. With CarPlay, you can use the phone
for navigation, but only one vendor’s app works: Apple’s not Google’s,
nor anybody’s else’s. You can send and receive text messages but in the
car with CarPlay engaged, you’ll only hear the texts, not see them.
Talk to Siri, not your car’s voice recognition
On
the Apple CarPlay side, the news is not altogether bad. Apple’s Siri
will provide voice control to manage CarPlay, not your car’s awful voice
recognition. Most users, probably all users, will prefer Siri to what
comes with the car for voice recognition.
For apps on your phone
that aren’t CarPlay certified, you may be able to access them through
Siri Eyes Free. Eyes Free exists already on some pre-CarPlay cars and is
part of CarPlay. This gives you voice-only queries (meaning iPhone
typing is not permitted) through the car’s microphone and you receive
voice-only responses played through the car’s speakers. To access Siri
Eyes Free, the driver typically taps and holds the car’s voice control
button — long hold or double tap for Siri Eyes Free, single tap for the
car’s voice input – and then ask the question. If the app is Eyes Free
compatible, if your phone is in cellular range, and if you speak to
Siri’s satisfaction, you should get a workable response except when Siri
is busy right now, sorry.
As we noted in the Apple CarPlay backgrounder
earlier in the year, this is the technology originally called iOS in
the Car. Apple lost the dorky name, but Google — for now — is sticking
with Google Android Auto. Score round one to Apple.
The car’s
existing voice recognition remains a tool for communicating with the
car’s entire infotainment system when you’re not using CarPlay. For
CarPlay, you also can use the center stack controls, the touchscreen,
and a cockpit control wheel (BMW iDrive and its followers). As Apple
says, “If it controls your screen, it controls CarPlay.” For both
CarPlay and Eyes Free, when the phone is plugged in and either
are running, the phone cannot be accessed directly.
Lockdown: Why CarPlay and Siri may annoy and disappoint
Here’s
why you may feel Apple and your automaker gave you a half-full glass.
Every iOS app has to be Apple-approved and a CarPlay app has to be
approved again. That’s a big task, and for now a small list of approved
apps. It currently includes music, phone and contacts, maps (Apple’s),
texting (sort of, see below), and typically a switcher app that takes
you back to the car’s native infotainment system. For now, there are a
half-dozen available non-Apple apps: Beats Music (an Apple app now),
iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher, and Podcasts. Notice the lack of Pandora
and Google Maps.
With texting, the driver or passenger uses Siri
to compose the text. Siri parses the voice input, plays it back in
Siri’s voice, and if you approve it, sends it as a text to the
recipient. You just hope “who’re” doesn’t go through as “hoer” or worse.
A colleague recently had “parked” translated to a client as “porked.”
The reply comes back to you as a voice text message while the phone is
connected and stored on your iPhone as well, viewable once you
disconnect. Most demos I saw got the sample text messages right, but not
all. You correct the message by re-recording it. The potential for
frustration may be high.
A handful of automakers, mostly the
prestige German brands, currently display on-screen texts and snippets
of e-mail you can see at a glance. But that’s when you’re outside
CarPlay. Viewable text messages via CarPlay are most likely to work — if
Apple buys in — on cars with dual-view LCD displays where the driver
sees one view and the passenger sees a different view. Mercedes and
Lexus have that.
All this only works if your phone is within
range. Siri processes your voice in the cloud. That’s where an
integrated car telematics modem with a rooftop antenna would have better
range.
No automaker yet has announced a way that would give the
passenger more permissions than the driver. Intel and Ford developed a
prototype gesture tracking system, Mobii, that could tell if the passenger was the one doing input.
CarPlay
requires current iPhones — iPhone 5S, iPhone 5C, and iPhone 5 — with
Lightning connectors. If everyone turns their phones over every 24
months (the sealed battery is shot anyway), that should be minor. Merely
annoying. If you’re investing $30,000-plus in a CarPlay car, you can
spring for a new phone at the same time.
CarPlay requires a car
with an LCD display and a CarPlay head unit. That means you need a new
car. Even new models announced and shipped since CarPlay’s spring
announcement may not work until later production. For instance, the
2015 Hyundai Sonata,
on sale since June and our Editors’ Choice among affordable midsize
cars, will not be CarPlay compatible with early
production. Mercedes-Benz will have limited backwards compatibility for
previously built cars.
If you have CarPlay navigation, you may not
need the automaker’s navigation. For now, most every new car navigation
system is part of a package with other features you may want, such as
premium audio, a sunroof, or leather seats. BMW, a CarPlay supporter,
sells navigation separately, but it’s far cheaper in a package, and
BMW’s navigation is so good you ought to buy it, especially when you’re
in for fifty grand already on the car.
The good stuff
Apple
CarPlay does several things well. Most of all, you’ll probably be more
comfortable with Siri as your voice input system. It’s a technology you
know, use, and mostly like, except when it gets your clearly spoken
request hopelessly garbled.
The CarPlay buttons are big and easy
to tap. With an existing LCD display, who hasn’t tried to pick line one
on the display of choices on a bumpy road and hit line two by mistake,
so you end up being sent to 3500 West Market Street instead of East several miles away?
Automakers
have flexibility in design, even if they’re looking for more freedom.
The icons look the same across the cars, although the icon to return to
Hyundai’s non-CarPlay infotainment system looks different from the
Mercedes-Benz icon, for instance. Volvo, which has a vertical center
stack LCD, has modified CarPlay to look good that way (photo).
As
CarPlay evolves, more apps will be certified and you’ll have a richer
experience. You might be able to choose among several navigation apps
and virtually all the streaming music services. But it’s slim pickings
for now.
What about Google Android Auto?
Android Auto was announced last month. Just as CarPlay only works with iOS devices, Android Auto
only works with Android phones. It offers the same core features as
CarPlay: phone control and contacts, music control, text message
composing and playback. Android Auto will have web search.
Compatible
apps should include Google Maps, Google Play Music, MLB at Bat, Pandora
Radio, Spotify, Songza, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Joyride and TuneIn.
Although Google announced later than Apple, the expectation is that both
should arrive at the same time, in late 2014. Automakers say they’re
specifying radio head units that support both.
With just a couple of months
until the iPhone 6′s expected release date in September, a new video
strongly suggests that the device will have a 4.7-inch sapphire glass
display. The video apparently shows the front panel of an iPhone 6,
direct from the production line in China (sourced by Sonny Dickson, who
has a pretty good record with iPhone leaks and rumors). If this really
is the iPhone 6 sapphire glass front panel, prepare to be excited: This
thing is virtually indestructible, withstanding extreme scratch and
bend/torque tests.
The video, published by Markus Brownlee, shows a
4.7-inch iPhone 6 front panel. It is virtually identical to the iPhone
5S front, but scaled up by about 50%. The iPhone 6 screen aspect ratio
appears to be the same 16:9 as the iPhone 5S,
but presumably the resolution of the iPhone 6 will step up to 1920×1080
(or maybe even higher, if Apple wants to reclaim the pixels-per-inch
crown). The panel came from famed iPhone leaker Sonny Dickson, who
appears to be well connected with Apple’s Chinese production line.
But more importantly, look at
the abuse that Brownlee then foists upon the unsuspecting iPhone 6
sapphire glass screen. While it’s possible that he’s pulling his
punches, it really does look like he’s trying his hardest to scratch the
screen with a knife and keys. Likewise, when he steps on the screen and
tries to snap it by bending it back, I think he’s really trying.
Perhaps
rather importantly, though, Brownlee doesn’t perform any impact tests —
such as smashing the front panel with a large rock. While we know that sapphire is incredibly strong,
it is also quite brittle; so it should be great for avoiding scratches,
but a drop on a hard floor could shatter the screen into a million
pieces. Given how common phone dropping is, though, and the memories of
shattered iPhone 4 glass still seared into the memories of millions of
owners, I’m sure Apple has a solution in place. Maybe it’s a special
breed of sapphire, or more likely the sapphire is laminated with another
material to provide higher impact resistance.
If this really is the iPhone 6
front cover, it’s significant for a couple of major reasons. First,
with a display diagonal of at 4.7 inches, this would be a massive
departure from the iPhones of yore. In the iPhone’s seven-year history,
the screen size has only changed once before — and that was more of an
aspect ratio adjustment than anything else (woo, another row of icons!) A
4.7-inch screen, presumably with a 1920×1080 or 2560×1440 LCD display,
would put the iPhone 6 on a much more even footing with other
superphones from Samsung, HTC, and Nokia. A boule of synthetically created sapphire crystal Second,
it would be the first mass-market smartphone with a sapphire glass
front panel. Sapphire glass has been used in smaller applications
(wristwatches, the front element on the iPhone 5S’s rear camera), but it
has historically been too expensive to fashion an entire fascia out of
the stuff. With its exclusive partnership with sapphire glass maker GT Advanced Technologies,
and no doubt some beefy capital investment from Apple’s deep pockets,
it would appear that production costs have now reached a low enough
level to make a sapphire glass iPhone 6 viable.
Expect a lot more
iPhone 6 information to leak out over the next two months in the run-up
to its official September unveil and release. We wouldn’t be surprised
if the sapphire glass, 4.7-inch screen, and a much-increased display
resolution are the main extent of the iPhone 6′s new features. It will
be interesting to see how other mobile device makers, such as Samsung,
react (no one else seems to have the capacity to make large quantities
of sapphire glass), and how Corning reacts to this new threat (Gorilla
Glass has been mostly unchallenged for a few years now).
