Dell's $100 Android Computer Is Finally Shipping

You?d be forgiven for not knowing what Project Ophelia was from a bar of soap, but it?s actually something really special: it?s Dell?s $100 Android computer packed into a tiny, USB stick-sized package. It has been a pie-in-the-sky idea for some time now after its debut at CES, but according to new reports, it?s finally shipping out.

The Ophelia is a curious little gadget that reportedly connects to any HDMI port, turning the screen into a PC, media centre, or gaming console depending on how you?ve customised it.

BGR is reporting that beta testers are getting their hands on the gadget now, with a view to a public release later in the year.

Micro-computers have been particularly popular in recent years with the success of the Beagleboard and the Raspberry Pi solutions, while Android has been twisted and tweaked to appear on everything from TV sticks through to game consoles like the Ouya and NVIDIA Shield. [BGR]

Source: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/08/dells-100-android-computer-is-finally-shipping/

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After 5 rejections from Apple, Imgur launches its image-sharing iOS app

A month following the?release of its Android app, popular image-sharing service Imgur has finally launched an official app for the iPhone and iPad after wrangling over approval with Apple.

Imgur is best known for its usage on influential community news site Reddit. Last October, Imgur went from being a place to simply upload images to a destination similar to Reddit where you can browse viral images. It recently launched its own meme generator. The service attracts 4 billion page views and more than 80 million unique visitors each month.

While Imgur has been around since 2009, it is just now getting around to launching mobile apps. It used to leave mobile app development to third parties by offering an open API, but then realized it wanted an official presence on mobile. It also noticed that 35 percent of its traffic now comes from mobile. So its new Android and iOS apps were born.

?We realized the experience in these third-party apps wasn?t that great,? Imgur founder and CEO Alan Schaaf told VentureBeat.

Getting the Android app approved was simple and went off without a hitch, Schaaf said. But the Apple approval process was a headache. Apple rejected the app five times over concerns about copyright violations and crude content.

?Apple didn?t quite understand who we were,? Schaaf said. ?It?s just like many other apps, and we had to explain that we follow all DMCA guidelines. It was a bit frustrating to go through that process but it makes sense.?

San Francisco-based Imgur has not raised any funding to date but is considering it. Imgur has 10 full-time employees.

Source: http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/01/after-5-rejections-from-apple-imgur-launches-its-image-sharing-ios-app/

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Zendaya Sings National Anthem at Dodgers Baseball Game

Zendaya gets ready to sing the National Anthem during the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game last week in Los Angeles.

The 16-year-old singer/actress wrote after her performance, ?Thanks for having me @dodgers let?s play ball!!?

Taking on the Cincinnati Reds, the Dodgers won 1-0 in 11 innings.

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Zendaya

?I?m in Canada shooting a movie for 8 weeks?I?m gonna try to give u a little inside scoop! but the wifi is kinda weak?keep u posted!!? Zendaya wrote over the weekend.

Zendaya Sings National Anthem at Dodgers Baseball Game 7/26/13

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Source: http://www.justjaredjr.com/2013/07/31/zendaya-sings-national-anthem-at-dodgers-baseball-game/

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Marshfield Legion Baseball: Time runs out on Post 88

Post 88 came into the playoffs on the wrong foot, but the Marshfield American Legion Baseball team tried to recover. The tough part for Post 88 was that it did not get the chance to fully recover.

Marshfield, which had trouble in its final two games of the regular season getting the offense going, gave Zone 10 top-seed Brockton Post 35 all it could handle in the teams? best-of-three playoff series.

The two teams fought through rain and darkness curfews, but could not complete the best of three series.

They were tied at one game each, but rainouts on both last Thursday and Friday prevented them from finishing the series. The south sectionals were slated to start this past Sunday, and according to the rules in Zone 10 and the other zones in the south, the team with the higher seed advances on to the sectionals, and that was Brockton.

?It definitely was a tough way to go out,? Marshfield Manager Zack Perry said. ?Unfortunately, the series all had to be completed by Friday.?

The series that started on Monday, July 22, went through out the entire week. It featured a first game that was scoreless after 12 innings and suspended to the next day. What proved to be the tough part of the series was that the next day, Tuesday, July 23, had heavy rain even though the two teams played a scoreless 13th inning at Siever Field in Plymouth.

The first game marathon concluded on the third day. The two teams finally decided the first game in the 14th inning.

The game was completed on a day when Zone 10?s other three series were all completed. The tough part for Post 88 was that after missing scoring chances in the game, which included the top of the 14th, Brockton Post 35 came back with an unearned run in the bottom of the inning for the 1-0 win.

?We played 14 innings in the first game, and we could not get a timely hit in the game,? Perry said.

The second game was played immediately after the first game was completed at Forges Field in Plymouth, and Marshfield won, 3-1, to even the best-of-three series.

The third game was rained out twice, and Marshfield was the tough luck losing team in the series that was not completed.

The pitching for Post 88 in the series was great. Marshfield got 10 shutout innings from Greg Langer in the first game. He struck out three and scattered nine hits, but got a no decision.

Nick Colafemina was immense in the second game of the series. He pitched a complete game in Post 88?s 3-1 win over Brockton.

?Greg Langer?s effort was incredible,? Perry said. ?He pitched a great game. Nick Colafemina pitched a great game for us in the second game. It was too bad that the series had to be decided by the weather.?

Marshfield came up with its three runs in the second game in the fourth inning, scoring its first run on a D.J. Evans? fielder?s choice with the bases loaded to tie the game, 1-1.

Evan Vigneau slashed a two-run single off of the Brockton third baseman to give Post 88 a 3-1 lead.

Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com/marshfield/sports/x606647695/Marshfield-Legion-Baseball-Time-runs-out-on-Post-88?rssfeed=true

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US home prices rise 12.2 percent, best in 6 years

WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. home prices jumped 12.2 percent in May compared with a year ago, the biggest annual gain since March 2006. The increase shows the housing recovery is strengthening.

The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index released Tuesday also surged 2.4 percent in May from April. The month-over-month gain nearly matched the 2.6 percent increase in April from March ? the highest on record.

The price increases were widespread. All 20 cities showed gains in May from April and compared with a year ago.

Prices in Dallas and Denver reached the highest level on records dating back to 2000. That marks the first time since the housing bust that any city has reached an all-time high.

Home values are rising as more people are bidding on a scarce supply of houses for sale. Steady price increases, along with stable job gains and historically low mortgage rates, have in turn encouraged more Americans to buy homes.

Higher home prices help the economy in several ways. They encourage more sellers to put their homes on the market, boosting supply and sustaining the housing recovery. And they make homeowners feel wealthier, encouraging consumers to spend more.

The index covers roughly half of U.S. homes. It measures prices compared with those in January 2000 and creates a three-month moving average. The May figures are the latest available. They are not adjusted for seasonal variations, so the monthly gains reflect more buying activity over the summer.

Mortgage rates have surged since early May, though the increase would have had little impact on the current report. The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has jumped a full percentage point since early May and reached a two-year high of 4.51 percent in late June.

Rates jumped after Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Federal Reserve could slow its bond-buying program later this year if the economy continues to improve. The Fed's bond purchases have kept long-term interest rates low, encouraging more borrowing and spending.

In recent weeks, Bernanke and other Fed members have stressed that any change in the bond-buying program will depend on the economy's health, not a set calendar date.

Since those comments, interest rates have declined. The average on the 30-year mortgage was 4.31 percent last week.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-home-prices-rise-12-2-percent-best-130233769.html

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PHOTOS: Beaches Blanketed In Crude Oil After Major Spill In The Gulf Of Thailand

Crude oil has blanketed water and beaches at a Thai vacation spot after an offshore pipeline leaked an estimated 13,200 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Thailand Saturday.

The spill occurred about 12 miles off the coast of Rayong, Thailand, and reached Ao Prao beach on the island of Koh Samet on Sunday. About 1,900 feet of white sandy beach was covered in oil.

CREDIT: Credit: AP

CREDIT: Shuttershock

The oil prompted an evacuation of tourists staying at the beach, which is popular among foreign and Thai visitors. The operator of the pipeline, PTT Global Chemical, has apologized for the spill and said the leak has been plugged, but as of Tuesday, the company did not know how the leak had occurred ? a matter the company?s president told CNN Tuesday needed ?a lot of investigation.?

The company?s initial estimates that the cleanup would take two to three days have proven too optimistic ? now in its fourth day, the oil is only partially cleaned up and the oil has now spread to nearby smaller islands.

The spill may also be moving towards the mainland Rayong province, a development that the Thai government has been concerned about from the spill?s start. According to the Wall Street Journal, Thai media outlets have reported that thin films of oil and oil residue have been spotted from a beach in Rayong, about 13 miles from Ao Prao beach. As of Tuesday, Rayong?s Muang?s district leader hadn?t received a report of an oil slick but had told his staff to be on the lookout for oil.

CREDIT: European Pressphoto Agency

CREDIT: AP

Thai authorities have declared the area of Ao Prao a disaster zone and hundreds of Royal Thai Navy personnel, PTT Global Chemical workers, national park officials and villagers are working to remove the oil. Airplanes have also spread chemical dispersants over the spill ? a decision that was a ?last resort? due to windy weather that made the use of oil booms difficult. The dispersants are worrying some in Thailand, however, because PTT Global Chemical has admitted the chemicals could be an environmental or health hazard. Dispersants have been found to be harmful before ? chemicals used to disperse oil from the BP oil spill created a mixture that was 52 times more toxic than oil alone, according to one study.

It?s still unclear how the spill could affect wildlife in the region ? government officials have ordered a test of seafood caught off Rayong?s coast, and an initial inspection of the coral reef located about 300 feet from Ao Prao didn?t find any oil damage. Ply Pirom, a Greenpeace manager in the area, said the region ?can expect an impact on fisheries and from chemical contamination in the food chain.?

CREDIT: AP

Source: http://thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com/c/34726/f/638933/s/2f65b4b5/sc/10/l/0Lthinkprogress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A130C0A70C310C238820A10Cthailand0Eoil0Eleak0C/story01.htm

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Diane Ravitch: 3 Dubious Uses of Technology in Schools

Image: DAVID DESPAU

Technology is transforming American education, for good and for ill. The good comes from the ingenious ways that teachers encourage their students to engage in science projects, learn about history by seeing the events for themselves and explore their own ideas on the Internet. There are literally thousands of Internet-savvy teachers who regularly exchange ideas about enlivening classrooms to heighten student engagement in learning.

The ill comes in many insidious forms.

One of the malign manifestations of the new technology is for-profit online charter schools, sometimes called virtual academies. These K?12 schools recruit heavily and spend many millions of taxpayer dollars on advertising. They typically collect state tuition for each student, which is removed from the local public schools' budget. They claim to offer customized, personalized education, but that's just rhetoric. They have high dropout rates, low test scores and low graduation rates. Some have annual attrition rates of 50 percent. But so long as the virtual schools keep luring new students, they are very profitable for their owners and investors.

Another dubious use of technology is to grade essays. Major testing companies such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill are using software to score written test answers. Machines can grade faster than teachers, but they cannot evaluate factual statements or the imaginative use of language. A student may write that the World War II began in 1839, and the machine won't object. Students will learn to write according to the formula that the machine likes, at the expense of accuracy, creativity and imagination. Worse, the teacher will abandon the important job of reading what his or her students write and will be less informed about how they think. That is a loss for the quality of education. Frankly, it is a problem with online assessment in general, as the job of testing is shifted from the teacher to a distant corporation; the last round of state testing saw computer breakdowns in several states. In addition, it is only a matter of time until students hack into the tests.

The most worrisome use of technology is to accumulate and store personal, confidential data about every public school student. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put up close to $100 million to create the Shared Learning Collaborative, now called inBloom, with partners Wireless Generation (owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation) and Carnegie Corporation. It will gather student data from several districts and states, including New York, Georgia, Delaware, Kentucky and Louisiana (some of these states are reconsidering because of objections from parents). The data will be stored on a cloud managed by Amazon. On the cloud will be students' names, addresses, grades, test scores, disability status, attendance, program participation and many other details about students that teachers and schools are not allowed to release.

Who needs all this personal information, and why is it being shared? Advocates say that the goal is to create better products for individual students. Critics believe that the information will be given or sold to vendors, who will use it to market products to children and their parents. No one knows whether the data will be secure; snoops frequently hack into databases and clouds.

Until recently, the release of personal student data without parental consent would have been prohibited by a 1974 federal law known as FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act). In 2011, however, the U.S. Department of Education revised the FERPA regulations, making this data project legal. The electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has sued the Department of Education in federal court for watering down FERPA and allowing students' data to be released to third parties without parental consent.

Here is the conundrum: teachers see technology as a tool to inspire student learning; entrepreneurs see it as a way to standardize teaching, to replace teachers, to make money and to market new products. Which vision will prevail?

This article was originally published with the title Promise and Peril.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/~r/sciam/basic-science/~3/OGM6fUFZLVo/article.cfm

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