Idea for Hangouts app:

Google Map showing participants location. Or will that kill part of the conversation?

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Tablets by the numbers

Reshared post from +Arthur Goldstuck

Tablets by the numbers. The state of play in South Africa: more than 150 000 tablets sold, most of them iPads. Biggest contributor right now is FNB: http://bit.ly/v8n0hK

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Tablets by the numbers: No slowdown in sight | memeburn
Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad on 27 January 2010, which happened to be the day my mother turned 88. Back in 1922, the year she was born, sales of the Model T

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Cool retro toaster!

Cool retro toaster!

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May Allah bless him and grant him peace

The duah (prayer) Sallallahu alayhi wa sallam (صلى الله عليه و سلم) "May Allah bless him and grant him peace." is used after stating Prophet Muhammad's name. Unfortunately however, this has been translated incorrectly by many to mean "Peace be upon him", which to me is quite different. The correct translation, is a prayer to Allah, while the latter is almost a statement, not directed to anyone. It may seem like a petty semantic issue, but I think our intention when saying it is affected by we understand to be the translation and after all, we are judged by intention.

New Samsung ad mocks Apple fans

Reshared post from +JR Raphael

New Samsung ad mocks Apple fans

I smell a viral video in the making...

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Reshared post from +Charly Burleson

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Handmade Portraits: The Sword Maker
As one of Japan's last remaining swordsmiths, Korehira Watanabe has honed his craft for 40 years while attempting to recreate the mythical Koto sword.

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Sometimes I read an article about open source that drives me nuts

Reshared post from +Chris DiBona

Sometimes I read an article about open source that drives me nuts. A recent one stated, without irony, that 'critics have been pounding the table for years about open source being inherently insecure' and that android is festooned with viruses because of that and because we do not exert apple like controls over the app market.

Let me speak to the first one: Open source, which as you know is present in a major way in all three major mobile phone operating systems (android, ios, rim) is software, and software can be insecure. I would posit that popular open source software only gets to become that popular if they pay close attention to security and respond to users concerns about the same, otherwise other projects come to the fore.

For example, in the dusty spans of time, both sendmail and apache went through a year or multiyear period when after they hit 95% and 70% marketshare where the security flaws started becoming a problem on the growing internet.

Sendmail saw multiple oss and proprietary competitors (qmail comes to mind) and over a period of years educated enough sysadmins on how to wrestle sendmail.cf appropriately and fixed problems with the system to stem the loss of marketshare to other vendors and projects.

Similarly, Apache saw people rejecting many of the modules that were perceived to be (And often were) problematic. Some modules didn't come back, some came back stronger or with stronger default options.

So in the spirit of making a positive post here are some facts for future writers of articles about open source, mobile os' and security. A Cheat sheet, if you will:

IOS and Android both use webkit derived browsers, Webkit is coded by android, chromuim and apple developers, and (edited: to fix a sentence here) both use code from the original khtml projects out of KDE.

Both use , at their core, open source kernels (ios uses a bsd derivative, android, a linux one).

Every single CE device uses tons of libraries from open source, especially openssl.

Every single CE device owes a huge technical thank you to GCC. most are built using gcc.

All the major vendors have app markets, and all the major vendors have apps that do bad things, are discovered, and are dropped from the markets.

No major cell phone has a 'virus' problem in the traditional sense that windows and some mac machines have seen. There have been some little things, but they haven't gotten very far due to the user sandboxing models and the nature of the underlying kernels.

No Linux desktop has a real virus problem.

Yes, virus companies are playing on your fears to try to sell you bs protection software for Android, RIM and IOS. They are charlatans and scammers. IF you work for a company selling virus protection for android, rim or IOS you should be ashamed of yourself.

Yes, a virus of the traditional kind is possible, but not probable. The barriers to spreading such a program from phone to phone are large and difficult enough to traverse when you have legitimate access to the phone, but this isn't independence day, a virus that might work on one device won't magically spread to the other. (and yes, I saw the deleted scene http://www.cracked.com/article_18720_7-famous-movie-flaws-that-were-explained-in-deleted-scenes.html )

If you read an analyst report about 'viruses' infecting ios, android or rim, you now know that analyst firm is not honest and is staffed with charlatans. There is probably an exception, but extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.

If you read a report from a vendor that trys to sell you something based on protecting android, rim or ios from viruses they are also likely as not to be scammers and charlatans.

Please note: Policy engines, and those tools that manage devices from an corporate IT department are not the same thing at all, but sometimes marketers in companies that sell such things sometimes tack on 'virus' protection. That part is a lie, tell your vendor to cut it out.

So there you go. I'm sure people will now chime in about some worm or malware they downloaded from some app market or something, which will be moderately fun, then it will devolve into a discussion about something unrelated, then I'll cancel comments. :-)

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Reshared post from +Euisul Hwang

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Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface available for pre-order in 23 countries, expected to ship in 2012
Engadget

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http://mygoogleplus.de/id/

http://mygoogleplus.de/id/

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Reshared post from +Euisul Hwang

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Hackers find a way to control Siri using brainwaves
Siri uses your voice to perform its tasks, but what about taking it to the next level by using your [...]

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MTN To Roll Out R8 Billion 3G Upgrade in 2012 | 2oceansvibe.com

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MTN To Roll Out R8 Billion 3G Upgrade in 2012 | 2oceansvibe.com

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MTN To Roll Out R8 Billion 3G Upgrade in 2012 | 2oceansvibe.com
MTN have announced the roll out of R8 billion worth of 3G wireless stations to enhance service provision across the country. MTN is Africa's largest provider of mobile telecommunications services, and has around 3000 wireless 3G base stations in South Africa alone. “Data is the future,” ...

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True axis of terror?

http://www.ewn.co.za/Story.aspx?Id=77164

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Eyewitness News: Netanyahu is a liar - Sarkozy
EWN Logo. 08:38 CAT / Tuesday, 08 November. Home; Local; World; Sport; Business; Weather; Features; Multimedia; iWitness; Traffic; SMS Alerts; RSS Feeds; Contact. AT A GLANCE >; ZAR/AUD : 8.1317; Z...

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The Hackathon project made it onto Engadget! How friggin AWESOME!

Reshared post from +Anthony Isaakidis

The Hackathon project made it onto Engadget! How friggin AWESOME!

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Google+ laser hack, Hangout shoots first (video)
Engadget

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http://hackaday.com/2011/11/07/google-hangout-laser-turret/

http://hackaday.com/2011/11/07/google-hangout-laser-turret/

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Google Hangout laser turret - Hack a Day
The guys from the House4Hack hackerspace in Johannesburg won the 2011 Google+ Hackathon with their Friggin' Laser Turret. The build started off as a remote-controlled webcam that can be controlled by ...

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