The news for Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Links for this episode:
Activision offering PS3 to PS4 Call of Duty: Ghosts upgrades for $10 | Polygon
Activision is offering customers who purchase Call of Duty: Ghosts on PlayStation 3 to upgrade to the PlayStation 4 version of the game for $10, the company announced today.CEO of Activision Publishing, Eric Hirshberg, said in a statement that the promotion and other deals is to make the next-generation transition "as seamless and easy" for Call of Duty fans as possible, saying that "there's more news to come on that front." Earlier this month, it was announced that Call of Duty: Ghosts' downloadable content will transfer to next-gen consoles for those who buy the game's Season Pass.
Bing for Schools lets US citizens earn free Surface RT tablets for their school just by using Bing - The Next Web
Microsoft unveiled Bing for Schools in the US a couple of months ago, detailing a new student-focused version of its search engine with no advertising whatsoever and automatic filtering of adult content. To ensure schools pick Bing over any of its competitors, Microsoft is now sweetening the deal by bundling in free Surface RT tablets as part of the program.Users can sign up to the Bing Rewards scheme and start accruing credits simply by using Microsoft’s search engine from their home or a mobile device. Every time the nominated school hits 30,000 credits, Microsoft will then send out a free Surface RT tablet with an accompanying Touch Cover.
Google Helpouts plans to connect experts with novices for live video learning | Android Central
Google has introduced a new service it is calling "Google Helpouts" today, and as the name would imply it is based on connecting people to help each other with a Google Hangout video call. A new page and support documentation for Google Helpouts has been released quietly tonight (we'd expect Google to make a formal announcement soon) with a lot of information about what exactly it is and how it works.The basic idea is to build up a network of experts on different topics — cooking, exercise and mechanical help are used as examples — that are willing to help others who have a need for that specific knowledge, and link them together for either free or paid help.
Facebook And 6 Phone Companies Launch Internet.org To Bring Affordable Access To Everyone | TechCrunch
Facebook has announced a partnership with Samsung, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera and Qualcomm to launch Internet.org, a project aimed at bringing affordable Internet access to the 5 billion people without it. The companies will work together on data-compression technologies and cheap, high-quality smartphones to make the web cheaper.While it might seem like the whole world is connected, just one-third of the globe’s population has Internet access, and adoption is only growing at 9 percent. Internet.org aims to speed up that rate.
Apple discloses bug that was likely responsible for developer center downtime | iMore
Apple recently updated their Web Server notifications page with several new acknowledgements to people who discovered and reported security vulnerabilities in Apple's servers. Among the discoveries acknowledged seems to be the vulnerability that was responsible for Apple's Developer Portal's eight-day outage. The notifications page shows a remote code execution vulnerability being reported on July 18th, the same day that Apple took the developer site down.
In the days following the outage, security researcher Ibrahim Balic came forward publicly, believing that he was the one responsible for the outage. However, Apple is giving credit to 7dscan.com and SCANV of www.knownsec.com for the discovery of a remote code execution vulnerability on developer.apple.com.
Netflix launches ‘My List’ feature to help users quickly save and find what they want to watch next - The Next Web
To help users quickly find the next TV show and movie they want to watch, Netflix is rolling out a new feature called ‘My List’ for its cross-platform streaming service over the next two weeks.The idea is that users select the particular series, movies or individual episodes that they want to watch sometime in the future. These are then added to a dedicated ‘My List’ row in the Netflix home screen
Bradley Manning sentenced to 35 years in prison for WikiLeaks disclosures | The Verge
Bradley Manning's court-martial reached an end today, with Army Colonel Denise Lind sentencing him to 35 years in prison. She also ordered a reduction in rank to private, a forfeiture of all pay, and a dishonorable discharge. He will receive credit for 1,294 days for time served.
Nearly A Year Later, Twitter Triggers Return to IFTTT With Official Support - TechCrunch
Today, the ‘Internet glue’ service IFTTT gets a fresh set of Twitter triggers that allow users to build recipes that react to tweets, favorites, retweets and more. This allows users to return to archiving tweets to Dropbox, saving links and images, building lists off of favs and much more.
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