THE 6 BEST IPHONE6 EXTENDED BATTERY CASES TO KEEP THE POWER FLOWING

It’s always frustrating when your iPhone runs out of juice and there’s no charger or outlet nearby. If you find your iPhone 6 simply isn’t keeping up with you, why not consider snagging yourself one of the best battery cases on the market? We’ve got a range of different options for you to consider right here.

Incipio Qi Ghost Wireless Charging Battery Case ($100)

Our top pick is the Incipio Ghost. The smart thing about this case is that it supports Qi wireless charging. That means you can place it on any Qi wireless charging pad and the case will charge up – no plugging in required. It also supports Incipio’s offGrid dock, which is another wireless charging solution, and you can use a standard micro USB cable, which is included, along with a headphone extender. You can almost double your iPhone 6 battery life, thanks to the high capacity 2,100mAh battery. It looks good, and has a slim, one-piece design with a brushed aluminum finish on the back. There’s a circular, silver power button that will light up the four white LEDs to give you an idea of remaining power. If you’ve been looking for a battery case and like the idea of wireless charging – this is the one for you. 

Lenmar Maven Undead Power Battery Case ($90)

This slim and stylish battery case is a two-piece affair, which makes it easy to slide your iPhone 6 into place. It has a 3,000mAh battery inside which should fully charge the iPhone and still have a little left over in reserve. There are generous cut-outs for the camera and controls, a lip to protect the screen, and a port to redirect speaker audio to the front. The case has a soft touch, matte black finish, making it very comfortable to hold. If you want something brighter, it also comes in get blue, red, or silver versions. The only real detail on the minimalist body is the rear-mounted power button, which includes an LED to show remaining power. It’s fast to charge up thanks to a 2A input, and there is a microUSB cable and a headphone extender in the box. A desirable case.

Anker Ultra Slim Extended Battery Case ($40) 

Anker is a popular brand for portable batteries, so we’re not surprised to find that the iPhone 6 battery case it offers is good. It’s not the most stylish or full-featured offering, but where this case really stands out is the low price, and its capacity. The large 2,850mAh capacity more than doubles your iPhone’s battery life, and there are four LEDs on the back to indicate the internal battery’s remaining power. It’s not a problem to fit or remove the case, due to its two-piece design, plus it’s slim — a rarity in the world of extended battery cases. The matte finish is plain, but it does have a pleasing soft touch feel. Inside the box is a headphone extender and a short micro USB cable. 

Tylt Energi Sliding Power Case ($80)

This Tylt power case has a 3,200mAh battery inside, which is going to offer a good bit more than double your usual iPhone 6 battery life. The unique selling point here is the two piece design – there’s a thin shell for your iPhone 6, like a minimalist case, and it slides into the “Power Sleeve”. That means you can discard the battery portion when it’s out of charge and still have some protection for your phone. The four LED array on the back indicates remaining power. The downside with this case is that it is big and bulky with the Power Sleeve on. It also doesn’t ship with a headphone extender, but you’re going to need one. There is a micro USB cable included.

Mophie Juice Pack Ultra Case ($150)

There are a few reasons to look carefully at the Mophie Juice Pack Ultra. This battery case has a large capacity of 3,950mAh, so you’re looking at 150% extra life for your iPhone 6. It’s relatively slim considering the size of that battery, and it’s also protective, so you won’t have to worry about bumps and falls. You’ll find four LEDs on the back to show remaining power, but there’s also a switch so you can decide when to charge and when to save juice for later. Like most of the cases here, you can charge and sync your iPhone with the case on. It comes with a headphone extender and a micro USB cable.

Uno DX Charging Case ($70)

The Uno DX has a big, 3,000mAh battery, so you can add around 125% extra life to your iPhone 6 once its own battery has expired. It’s another two-piece sliding design which makes it easy to fit, plus there’s a power button and a three color LED array on the back, so you know how much juice is left. In addition to a handy headphone extender and micro USB cable in the box, Uno also supplies a screen protector. It’s a bit bulky and plain-looking, but it delivers plenty of extra juice and it will do a solid job of protecting your phone from damage.

Samsung’s ‘Safety Truck’ Shows The Road Ahead On Screen

When we get on the freeway, it’s several lanes wide and large, slow-moving semi-trucks stay over to the right. There’s a barrier in the middle to protect you from oncoming traffic. Outside of these populated areas, it’s a different story.

A single lane on each side of the road, with only a thin line of paint to separate them, is the rule in many parts of this country and many others. When you come upon a slower vehicle, your only options are to patiently drive behind them, or attempt a risky pass by driving in the oncoming lane. Samsung has devised a new system for their shipping trucks to try to make this process safer. View pics below:

Watch this short video clip:

WATERPROOF WIRELESS FITNESS-TRACKING HEADPHONES ARE ALL YOU NEED TO WORKOUT

Good sport headphones have a lot of features. They need to be able to stay in your ears while you jump, run, or jog, resist a few aggressive meetings with the ground, offer remote control of your phone so you don’t have to pull it out of your strap or pocket, or better, allow you to leave it in your locker. These days, why even bother if they’re not wireless? And, oh yeah, it would be nice if music actually sounded great on them, too.

Gogo-S is the totally wireless sport music player that hits all the right notes. It’s more than just a pair of tough-as nails wireless earbuds — and by wireless, we mean totally wireless, no wire connects one ear to the other — it’s a portable MP3 player and smart activity tracker with a heart rate detector and an interactive online training guide.

                                     

The Gogo-S (or Gogos, for the purpose of this article) use “Duet Play Technology” to communicate with each other. This keeps your music in sync in both ears without going the route of other sport headphones that have a wire linking the two ears together. As independent ear buds, they come in different ergonomically designed sizes, Small, Medium, and Large to fit securely in your ear. The Gogos link to your phone or computer with Bluetooth. You can stream music when you’re bored with the 1000 or so tracks you can store on them. Taps, swipes and presses on the all-in-one touch button on one or other earbud control not only the basics like track selection, volume, and on-off, but answer, end, or silence phone calls, and exercise-select as well.

The battery can last anywhere from three to five hours, but they come with a portable charging case that takes about 40 minutes to fully restore the charge, and will hold two charges worth of energy. For the weight-weenies out there, the Gogos weigh 11g for the pair.

The going price for the Gogo-S Sport Music Player earbuds is $250(#50,000), not cheap for a pair of wireless headphones, but not bad when you factor in the waterproofing, MP3 storage, call-answering, and the audible training and fitness tracking. The Go Sport app may have a separate fee structure; Digital Trends will update you when we know more. For now, you can grab a pair for $120(#24,000)  (taxes and shipping included to the US or China) on the Gogo-S Indiegogo page. G-Wearable’s plan is to ship to Early Birds by November, and the rest of the perks by December.

 

Forget big data — it’s already obsolete

equation is pretty simple, and goes like this: Data when processed becomes information, information when analyzed becomes knowledge, and knowledge when applied becomes intelligence.

From a business perspective, as more and more data is collected and works its way through the evolutionary process I just identified, the opportunity exists to generate intelligence, that when acted upon, can improve critical measures of success for every organization. Even knowing this, though, we should forget about big data. Why? It’s about to undergo a significant change.

Advances in multiple areas of technology are driving this transformation. The primary drivers are sensor technology, wearable computing, vehicles as a computing platform, and the Internet of Things (IoT). That is why you need to forget about big data: It is huge data.Smart data. Think about how all of this combines to create a substantial amount of new data that will rapidly move through the evolutionary process into action-oriented, near-real-time decision influence systems.

Data is the raw material necessary for organizations to understand what is happening and respond appropriately, and it’s creating new and unique opportunities for organizations. It is finally becoming the strategic asset that was envisioned in the early stages of the Internet.

SUE YAHOO

PEOPLE who sent or received emails from Yahoo Mail from late 2011 are able to sue the company as a group, a US judge has ruledYahoo faces a US class action lawsuit from an estimated one MILLION email users.

US District Judge Lucy Koh, sitting in San Jose, California, ruled earlier this week that people who sent emails to, or received emails from, Yahoo Mail subscribers since October 2 2011 may sue as a group under the Federal Stored Communications Act for alleged privacy violations.Yahoo has been accused of scanning the contents of emails sent to Yahoo Mail users in a bid to improve the targeted advertising for its 275million email subscribers.

Non-Yahoo Mail subscribers claimed the company also intercepted and analysed their emails – including keywords and attachments – to better its targeted advertising and boost profits, in addition to simply detecting spam and malware.

Last year, 80 per cent of the internet giant's revenue came from its search and display advertising.

A class action lawsuit can make it easier to obtain larger damages and more sweeping remedies at lower cost..SOURCE EXPRESS.CO.UK

PREVIEW: OFFICE 2016 ISN'T REVOLUTIONARY, AND THAT'S OKAY

Beneath the hype leading up to the imminent release of Windows 10, other teams at Microsoft are busy readying the 16^th full-version upgrade of the company’s highly successful office productivity software, Microsoft Office, officially dubbed “Office 2016.”

The number of Office users has, when including the current 9.2 million Office 365 Personal and Home users and more than 50 million Office Online users, surged recently to an estimated total of 1.2 billion users overall.

Despite its enormous popularity, office productivity software is changing—rapidly and drastically, moving online and to the cloud. Microsoft itself has recently said that the new Office experience will be in recognition of this new mobile and cloud-first world (which was supposed to be the focus all along, we thought). In other words, if all goes as Redmond expects, Office 2016 will be important not as stand-alone software, but as part of the Office 365 subscription service.

 

 A Full Version Upgrade?

BUYING A PC THIS YEAR? HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BLOATWARE

As PC manufacturers attempt to make their computers more affordable for customers, they usually turn to pre-loaded programs, where the developers will pay a fee to have their software included on the device.

Pre-loaded programs can include everything from games to media libraries to photo editors. In some instances programs can introduce users to software they wouldn’t have used otherwise while on the other hand, pre-loads can also be annoying and cumbersome.

When bloatware gets dangerous

Lenovo was embroiled in controversy earlier this year over installing the “Superfish” adware on certain laptops, which could break HTTPS connections and potentially allow man-in-the-middle attacks, putting user data at risk. It was one of the more serious cases of bloatware on computers, and had many security experts concerned, highlighting the issue for consumers.

After the controversy, Lenovo revamped its policy of pre-installed programs and offered free McAfee anti-virus solutions to those affected by Superfish.

At the time of the announcement, Lenovo stated that its Windows 10 laptops will be free of “what our industry call ‘adware’ and ‘bloatware’” in the future. It wasn’t a complete U-turn on pre-loads, though, as the announcement also stated that “for some countries, certain applications customarily expected by users will also be included.”

                             

Generally, the worst effect of pre-loaded software is degradation in the performance of your computer.

“Almost all of these programs come with auto-updaters that run constantly as a supposed security feature to keep the software current,” says Matt Sweeney of Morris Computer Consulting. “They also often have requests for user registration that will nag the user until completed. These nags are powered by scheduled system tasks that can cause performance issues.”

These reminders and notifications can cause some user confusion over what are legitimate programs and what aren’t, and that can lead to possibly falling for malware disguised as a software update.

Whatever the case may be, bloatware is nearly inevitable when buying a PC or laptop, and has extended to the mobile world too. In most cases, users can uninstall pre-loaded software from their computers, but some programs can launch automatically when you start Windows without the user realizing.

Manufacturers usually pre-load programs on their PCs and laptops as a means to lower the cost of the device. On the flipside, it can be potentially lucrative for the developers of these programs. They hope that by being on your system when you buy it you’ll use the program, possibly download more of their software, and maybe even pay a subscription fee.

Getting the balance right 

PC manufacturers need to vet the developers of software that may be bundled on your computer, according to Mike Nash, VP of customer experience at HP.

“We’re also doing our own level of QA to validate that what they’re shipping on the device is high quality,” he says. “Of course part of that is we scan for malware as well.” The process is often a case of balancing aggressive price points for PCs with the user experience by keeping pre-loads at a shrewd level.

Bloatware is powered by scheduled system tasks that can cause performance issues.

“The challenge we’ve gone through is saying how do you balance finding the one program that does 80 percent of things customers want it to do, versus three or four programs that collectively do more like 95 percent of what our customers want?” says Nash, using the example of a photo manager.

This was put to the test in one of HP’s most recent laptops, the Spectre x360. “One of the things for that we said is, we’re going to have one product for photos,” says Nash who adds that the experiment will see if having one product that has most features is better than several that do everything.

Customer feedback and changing policies

Dell is another company that is revising its approach to pre-loaded software. According to Brett Hansen, executive director of endpoint security at Dell, the company changed its policy a couple of years ago with the launch of Windows 8 based on customer feedback. Dell now has what it calls a “simpler, clean load” on its computers.

“It was really driven by consistent feedback from customers that they’d rather go find the applications themselves rather than us making the decision on their behalf,” explains Hansen.



Hansen and his colleagues at Dell arrived at this policy by carrying out a number of studies on users. One included putting a sample of customers in front of a computer with many pre-loaded programs and another group in front of a computer with the minimum. Most users preferred the cleaner PC.

Now Dell only includes the basics, such as an anti-virus program, back-up solution, and programs around troubleshooting and diagnostics.

“We’ve kept that policy in place and we continue to work on it. We’ve gone even thinner and lighter,” he adds. “For example with our back-up recovery solution, which we’ve had since Windows 8, we’re going to sunset with Windows 10 because Windows 10 has a great new back-up recovery. Microsoft’s got that covered.”

There’s a growing awareness around software and hardware. The consumer is more knowledgeable and savvy than they were a few years ago.

“They’re not interested in me pre-loading an app, which they know they can go find from a number of different stores,” he continues. “That’s really where the big change is, and perhaps it was brought on by phones and people getting more comfortable with online stores.”

What the software developers have to say

Bloatware and pre-loads generally earn a lot of criticism, but that’s not to say that pre-loaded apps and programs are maligned across the board. Most people are happy to have Adobe Reader, for example, ready on their system when they get started. So how do the companies behind pre-loaded software feel?

PowerDVD, a media player developed by CyberLink, has been bundled on PCs by several major manufacturers. Richard Carriere, CyberLink’s SVP of global marketing says its software is much like any PDF-viewing or Office-like software and people expect it.

Not all pre-bundled software is created equal.

“Our software is serving a universal purpose and both users and manufacturers see high value in having it pre-installed,” he says, adding that he sees high numbers of customers using PowerDVD. “Not all pre-bundled software is created equal, and it’s a fair criticism that some programs are considered bloatware. PowerDVD, though, is not one of them.”

So should customers have more of a say in how PCs are sold and the programs that are installed as soon as they open up the box?

“Absolutely. The amount of junk that comes with a new machine today is unreasonable,” says Marcin Kleczynski, CEO of anti-malware solution Malwarebytes. “Providing an easier removal option or making the bundled software opt-in would go a long way for the consumer.”

How can you combat bloat?

There are options out there for customers who want to remove bloat, such as tools like PC Decrapifier, which scan your system for bloatware and any software you’re not using that may be slowing down your performance. Beyond that, you can install a fresh version of Windows.

PC buyers can also go for the Microsoft Store’s Signature Edition computers. These stripped down laptops and PCs, running the latest edition of Windows, have no added third-party software.

Unfortunately, Signature Edition laptops, which include PCs from HP, Lenovo, and Dell, are much more expensive than the usual boxed PCs. For example, the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro-1370 Signature Edition 2 laptop costs $1,299 compared to other laptops in the Yoga range that start around the $679 mark. Entry-level models are rarely given the Signature treatment.

PC buyers are slowly but surely wising up to this, and are more aware now of pre-loaded programs than they have been before. Still, the onus will be on PC makers to be a little more judicious with what they pre-load.