Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to give iPhone 5, other smartphones to all employees

Yahoo employees are getting their choice of smartphone, including the iPhone 5. New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, late of Google, made the announcement on Friday in an internal memo obtained by Business Insider.

Apple announced the iPhone 5 on Wednesday, and perhaps Mayer was waiting for that announcement before making her own. A few weeks ago, it was reported that Mayer was "considering" such providing a new iPhone or Android phone to all employees.

She's gone further than that, even giving them the choice of a Nokia Windows Phone device.

Yahoo is calling the program "Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun!" With the program, Yahoo employees will have a choice of phones: the iPhone 5 (iOS), the Samsung Galaxy S3 (Android), the HTC One X (Android), the HTC EVO 4G LTE (Android), or the Nokia Lumia 920 (Windows Phone 8).

Yahoo is also going to pay its employees' phone bills. The program applies to both full- and part-time employees. As you might expect, this isn't just about fun: Yahoo is also going to discontinue IT support for Blackberry phones. These phones are expected to be used for business, as well as pleasure.

In addition, and just as importantly, the new phones will allow Yahoo employees to use the phones that Yahoo users are using.

Here's what the memo said:

We have a very exciting update to share with you today - we are announcing Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun! As of today, Yahoo is moving off of blackberries as our corporate phones and on to smartphones in 22 countries. A few weeks ago, we said that we would look into smartphone penetration rates globally and take those rates into account when deciding on corporate phones. Ideally, we'd like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.

Moving forward, we'll offer you a choice of devices as well as provide monthly plans for the data and phone.

The smartphone choices that we are including in the program are:

• Apple iPhone 5
• Android:
  • - Samsung Galaxy S3
  • - HTC One X
  • - HTC EVO 4G LTE
• Windows Phone 8:
  • - Nokia Lumia 920

We're getting started right away and taking orders starting now.

The assumption is that there will be no restrictions on carrier selection.

Of those, the Lumia 920 is the further out, in terms of retail launch; the Android phones have already launched and the iPhone 5 launches on Friday.

Source : examiner[dot]com

Surprise! Apple Fans Turn Samsung’s iPhone 5 Attack Ad on Its Head

Samsung isn't taking the iPhone 5 launch lying down, and it shouldn't surprise you to learn that nobody else is taking anything lying down either, ever. Not long after Samsung released its hackle-raising iPhone-basher, the ad was being flipped on its head by ardent Apple knights in iPhone armor.

Like the ad they are based on, these parodies probably aren't going to do much to change anyone's mind. They do, however, hint at an answer to that age old question "Can't we all just get along?" The answer being "No, because that phone you like is stupid." [CNET, Business Insider]

Source : gizmodo[dot]com

T-Mobile announces plans to sell iPhone 5-compatible nano-SIMs

We knew that T-Mobile was already planning for another year sans iPhone. That includes making it as easy as possible for consumers to take their iPhones and use them on the T-Mobile network, among other things.

While T-Mobile has been modifying its network to allow the iPhone to run on its HSPA+ network, its latest move is to add nano-SIM cards for Apple's iPhone 5 to its "catalog" in mid-October.

T-Mobile made the announcement shortly after the iPhone 5 was announced on Wednesday, and it wasn't unexpected. Of the Big Four carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, in order of size) T-Mobile is the only one missing the world's single best-selling super phone.

Still, T-Mobile knows it has significant numbers of customers using the iPhone, either in jailbroken and unlocked or just plain unlocked form.

However, iPhones (and not just the iPhone 5) don't work well on T-Mobile's network. In most locations customers only get 2.5G or EDGE, not even 3G and certainly not the faux 4G HSPA+ that T-Mobile advertises.

However, T-Mobile has iPhone-compatible 4G HSPA+ currently operating in Seattle, Las Vegas, and New York City. In addition, T-Mobile has promised that iPhone-compatible HSPA+ will be available in more markets by the end of this year.

Although T-Mobile is minus the iPhone, several smaller, regional carriers, such as C-Spire, have access to the iPhone, and even pre-paid carriers such as Cricket.

Source : examiner[dot]com

Amidst release of IPhone 5 reporters still debate Jobs' legacy

While Apple is busy releasing the IPhone 5, Esquire.com, Wired.com, and others are still busy rehashing Steve Jobs’ life, weighing out pros and cons, examining his character, deciding whether or not it’s good to be a jerk. But they’re missing the point. Both sides are quoted as seeing his jerkiness as the proof the being successful in business means not being successful as a human being. The only question is do you care or not.

Yet during an interview Steve was asked if he could have gotten the job done being a little nicer and he responded, “Yes, but that’s just not my style.” In other words from the guru’s own mouth - the person who business leaders are looking to for guidance; he said explicitly that you do not have to be such a jerk to get the job done.

Spirituality and physicality are often in conflict. You can’t meditate on the infinite and get drunk at a frat party. They don’t mix. You can, however, be spiritual and be successful in the business world at the same time. This is not a contradiction. You can show love and compassion for your employees and also push them to accomplish all they can. You can let someone go for not excelling and still be kind, give them compliments, offer to help them find a position that’s right for them, etc.

Enterpreneur.com quoted business coach Mike Staver, founder of the The Staver Group, a Fernandina Beach, Fla., business performance consulting firm, who advises that no matter how demanding you are, always treat your employees with respect. You can demand the best, and still give people dignity. There’s no reason to ever degrade someone in the workplace.

In this way you can be successful in business and successful in spirituality. Learn from one of the top people, Steve Jobs, himself, and maybe you can leave a legacy for the good, without his legacy for the bad.

Source : examiner[dot]com

iPhone 5 vs. Samsung Galaxy S3: Will new Apple iPhone 5 features be able to win?

The smartphone comparison - iPhone 5 does not set new standards

The hype surrounding the new iPhone 5 before the publication was great, but now the first comparisons have appeared. So how does the new Apple smartphone compare to the current leading smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S3?

The Magic lost?

In the past, the presentation of a new Apple iPhone has always brought a certain magic with it, however, this does not seem to be the case this time. Meanwhile, the competition has not slept and brought some extremely high quality and innovative smartphones to market. On Wednesday, Apple gave more detailed information on the new operating system iOS 6, and the new features of the iPhone 5. Perhaps not without reason, the new Apple device can not boast of any extraordinary features in comparison with other smartphones. Many analysts say the iPhone 5 lacks innovation, and thus the criticism began in various media sources.

Direct comparison with the Galaxy S3

Today, Samsung released an ad showing the iPhone 5 features versus the Galaxy S3. However, Samsung omitted a few details that would have given the iPhone 5 a fighting chance. In any case, an unbiased comparison between the models is provided below.

The iPhone 5 is mainly notable for its high-quality housing, its composition of aluminum and glass, and extremely light weight. However, comparisons with competitors and their top models show similar components but at a much cheaper price. According to Apple's data sheets, the new A6 processor chip and the new GPU will be twice as fast as its predecessor. Unfortunately, Tim Cook didn't reveal any details about the new chipset. Although, the speculation is that a chip is integrated into the iPhone with Cortex-A15 processors, thus explaining the double power. Apple hasn't given accurate information about the clock speeds as of yet, but the Samsung Galaxy S3 has a dual-core processor with 1.4 GHz clock speeds. Only a benchmark test will show which smartphone is actually faster.

A higher battery life was pledged during the presentation of the iPhone 5. Apple's data sheet says the iPhone 5 can handle up to 8 hours on 3G, up to 8 hours on LTE and up to 10 hours on Wi-Fi. Compared to the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Galaxy Note, this is not a milestone. In addition, the battery is installed, in contrast to S3's which is removable and supports wireless charging.

The Apple iPhone 5 has an image display of 1,136 x 640 pixels, a size of 4 inches and a pixel density of 326 ppi. The Galaxy S3 has a 4.8 inch display, a resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels and a pixel density of 306 ppi. In this regard, the iPhone 5 is assessed to be no better than Galaxy S3. Also, HD resolution is now offered by several manufacturers of Android smartphones and even the Nokia Lumia 920 has a resolution of 1,280 × 768 pixels. With a sharpness of 332 pixels per inch, the Lumia is still better than the iPhone5 .

Memory storage

In memory size (16, 32 and 64GB availability), the iPhone 5 also has a disadvantage because there is no card slot on board. In contrast, the Galaxy S3's smallest 16 GB version is equipped with a 64 GB Micro-SD card, therefore a total memory capacity of as much as 80 GB is possible. The largest version features a combined capacity of 128 GB.

Finally, the Galaxy S3 offers either comparable or better values than the iPhone 5 in every aspect. Furthermore, the price of the new Apple Phone 5 is higher than Galaxy S3, with or without a contract. Although the latest comparisons show the Galaxy S3 specs to be better than the iPhone 5, this will not stop the loyal Apple fans from enduring hours of waiting in line on Friday for no apparent reason.

Source : examiner[dot]com

Marissa Mayer gives all Yahoo employees an iPhone 5 (or Nokia Lumia 920 / Android phone)

Yahoo’s new chief executive Marissa Mayer is intent on making the company a more enjoyable place to work, and thus far, she’s doing a pretty good job at it.

Mayer is promising to buy all its full- and part-time employees a brand new Apple, Nokia, HTC, or Samsung smartphone, according to a company-wide memo obtained yesterday by Business Insider.

This isn’t the only thing Mayer has done to help boost employee morale at the company. Previously, she started giving workers a free lunch, which is something that was also done at her former Google stomping grounds as many know. And while employee will undoubtedly be happier with a new phone, it’s also part of Mayer’s plan to better focus the company’s efforts on mobile.

The memo reads:

“We have a very exciting update to share with you today – we are announcing  Yahoo! Smart Phones, Smart Fun!  As of today, Yahoo is moving off of blackberries as our corporate phones and on to smartphones in 22 countries.  A few weeks ago, we said that we would look into smartphone penetration rates globally and take those rates into account when deciding on corporate phones. Ideally, we’d like our employees to have devices similar to our users, so we can think and work as the majority of our users do.

Moving forward, we’ll offer you a choice of devices as well as provide monthly plans for the data and phone.

The smartphone choices that we are including in the program are:

* Apple iPhone 5
* Android:
- Samsung Galaxy S3
- HTC One X
- HTC EVO 4G LTE
* Windows Phone 8:
- Nokia Lumia 920

We’re getting started right away and taking orders starting now”

My guess is that the majority of people will end up getting an iPhone 5, but as is the case anywhere, there will be pockets of Android loyalists and those curious about Windows Phone 8.

Source : venturebeat[dot]com

The iPhone 5’s Custom A6 Boasts 1GB of Samsung RAM

During the iPhone 5 announcement, Apple mentioned the new phone would have its own new chip, the A6. Specific specs were sparse then, but AnandTech did some sleuthing and found the custom chip packs 1GB of RAM, and 33% more peak memory bandwidth than the iPhone 4S, which it will need for its high-res screen.

As it turns out, the alphanumeric code on the right side of the chip is actually a Samsung part number, and by digging through Samsung's product guide, AnandTech was able to find that the A6 has two 512MB DRAM die for a total of 1GB, and a speed of 1066 MHz. Basically, Apple's custom little chip here should be dishing out a performance boost.

The iPhone 5's peak memory bandwidth is 8528 MB/s, or a 33% improvement over the iPhone 4S's 6400 MB/s, and it's going to need it to push the pixels for the higher resolution display. That said, it's nowhere near the new iPad's 12800 MB/s, but then again, it doesn't need to be, considering it doesn't have such a mammoth screen to deal with.

Considering information gleaned from Xcode and Apple's insistence that we'll see better battery life on top twice the performance, the A6 literally doesn't fit into any sort of chip architecture we've seen before. It looks like Apple built this one more or less from scratch. There are, of course, other factors at play when it comes to how the iPhone 5 will perform on the whole, but we'll just have to wait and see about those. [AnandTech]

Source : gizmodo[dot]com

Inhabitat's Week in Green: GPS shoes, shape-shifting bicycle and a wheelchair helicopter

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

Apple dominated the news cycle this week with the debut of the iPhone 5, as the internet was buzzing with details about the lighter, thinner and faster new iPhone. But not everyone was thrilled with the news. A journalist in China spent 10 days undercover working at a Foxconn factory, detailing the grueling conditions workers undergo to produce the new gadget. Apple wasn't the only tech company in the news this week, though; Google got some time in the spotlight this week too, as the company's new augmented-reality glasses were trotted down the runway at New York Fashion Week. Continuing the trend of high-tech fashion, British designer Dominic Wilcox unveiled a GPS shoe that guides you home from anywhere in the world.

This week, a team of Finnish researchers did what we would have thought was impossible, building an electricity-free computer that's powered by water droplets. Israeli designer Nitsan Debbi cooked up a batch of working electronic products made of bread. A Boise-based tech company used 3D printing technology to produce a new working beak for an injured bald eagle. Artist Luzinterruptus fitted 10,000 books that had been discarded by public libraries with LED lights and covered the streets of Melbourne with them, and in an exciting development the much-anticipated Low Line underground park in NYC debuted a full-scale model of their incredible fiber-optic solar-concentrating technology in New York City's lower east side. And in a surprising development, a researcher in Switzerland discovered a special strain of fungus that can make an ordinary violin sing like a Stradivarius.

In Inhabitat news this week, we announced the 40 finalists in our design-a-laptop-bag contest that we partnered on with HP. There are some pretty awesome and innovative laptop bag designs in this competition, and the top 40 are duking it out to win $10,000 and a possible production run, so please be a judge and go vote for your favorite laptop bag here. Speaking of design contests, we also kicked off the European Solar Decathlon this week with a look at six incredible solar-powered homes that are competing at the European Solar Decathlon right now to win top prize.

We love finding simple solutions to seemingly complex problems, and aircraft manufacturer Airbus' vision for the future of aviation is just that. Part of the vision calls for flying jets in the same formation as a flock of birds, which would reduce energy use and carbon emissions. In other green transportation news, Cannondale unveiled a chainless concept bike that can changes shape as you ride it. In Utah, a grad student from the University of Denver shattered a world speed record by hitting 216 MPH on a home-built electric motorcycle. And in one of the most remarkable stories we came across this week, a Honduran man who is confined to a wheelchair has devoted most of his life to building a helicopter out of scrap metal.

A new study from the Carnegie Institution for Science found that there's enough wind power to meet the whole world's energy demands. And with the help of airborne wind turbines, we'd be able to generate even more power than with ground- and ocean-based units alone. In solar news, Morocco is on its way to becoming a world-class solar energy producer, as the country recently announced plans to harvest 14 percent of its energy from the sun by 2020. For renewable energy on a smaller scale, a graduate student in Israel developed a prototype for an elegant rocking chair called Otarky that produces energy from its rocking motion and can be used to charge devices and power a lamp.

Source : engadget[dot]com

Five great free Wellness iPhone apps

With iPhone 5 pre-orders making the news this weekend, this article shares five (5) free high-rated Wellness apps available for download in the iPhone. iPhone 5 or not, these Wellness apps are ready to use now, so there's no excuse to wait.

Note that some of these apps would ask for user's profile and few information of user's habits. It's entirely up to the user how much information he/she would be comfortable to share. Note as well that the more information the user provides the more helpful the app can be.

View slideshow: Five free Wellness iPhone apps

Macaw - Macaw is brought by The Prevention Plan. This app will ask a user's gender, age, height, weight, and few health appraisal questions. Response to health appraisal questions can be updated when any change in user's habit occur. Macaw would suggest activities, track user's progress, and displays a dashboard showing a summary of user's progress. The app has a feature to log exercises and duration, and it also logs distance covered via GPS tracker. Macaw can connect with a user's existing account in other fitness systems such as ActiPed+, Fitbit, MapMyFitness and others. The app also exercises user's knowledge on nutrition. Nutrition can also be tracked and recorded by letting the users enter daily calorie in-take. But for this feature to work, users will need to know calorie content of each meal consumed, which can be done with the help of another free app called MyFitnessPal.

MyFitnessPal - This is the mobile tool of the website myfitnesspal.com. What makes this app great is the ability to scan the bar code of any product imaginable in the refrigerator, pantry, and even in the wine cooler. The app retrieves product information including its calorie content. If you consume the product for breakfast for instance, the app will log it and the number of servings you entered as part of your breakfast meal. The app automatically adds it up to a daily total, which is displayed along side the daily goal. MyFitnessPal also tracks other nutrient goals at daily and weekly bases.

Bloom* - Bloom* is made by Mindbloom, an interactive media company responsible for the Mindbloom Life Game available in the internet. What makes the Bloom* app great is it covers the life areas including lifestyle, health, career, relationships, creativity, finances, and spirituality. (These life areas accentuates the four dimensions of wellness written in a previous article.) Bloom* reminds you to take a break and take some time to revisit which of your life areas you consider important and needs improvement, choose what matters, "discover what motivates you" and "take meaningful action" (quoted from Bloom*). Bloom* lets you create inspiring audio-visual reminders for any of the 'life areas' you consider important and for you to take action. Bloom* can connect with an existing Mindbloom account and with any existing social networking account if you so choose.

101 Ways - 101 Ways is short for '101 Revolutionary Ways to be Healthy', an app powered by experiencelife.com. As the name of the app implies, the app shares 101 ways for healthier living. Read through the 101 ways or pick one in random at a time. Content of the app gets updated periodically so new content can be expected. Any reader of the app can take any of the 101 ways to the next level by taking action, making healthier choices, and incorporating new things learned as a goal that can be recorded and tracked in Macaw or Bloom*.

Workout Trainer - Workout Trainer is developed by Skimble and displayed as 'Workouts' app once installed on the iPhone. This app would ask user's gender, birth date, preferred workout intensity, workout duration, fitness goals, user's name, and email address. Though a fuller Pro version is available, what make the free app version still great is it offers a number of routines that target specific muscle groups and includes warm-up routines, circuit training routines, cardio routines, sports conditioning, and drills. All routines are programmed for the user based on user information entered. Additionally, this app accesses music playlists on the iPhone and plays the playlist of choice.

These great wellness apps for the iPhone definitely bring a positive twist to being on the phone too long. Be well and enjoy.

Source : examiner[dot]com

iPhone 5 release date: Delivery may be bumped up for iPhone 5 pre-order delays

The iPhone 5 release date has been announced, and the official iPhone 5 pre-order date has passed. iPhone lovers will soon be able to hold in hand the smartphone they've waited on for a year. Some Apple fans learned they may not receive the long-awaited device on the actual launch date though. The iOS 6 device is so popular it sold out within a hour, and Apple had to start pushing delivery dates out as far as two-weeks after the iPhone 5 release date.

New information suggested the company has bumped up some of those delayed shipments, which means many iPhone aficionados may receive their beloved 6th generation Apple smartphone on the official launch date after all.

An article at Apple Insider says "One AppleInsider reader received a note from Apple letting them know that their iPhone 5 will arrive sooner than expected. When the order was originally placed Friday morning, this person was quoted an arrival date of two weeks."

The article, which was posted earlier today, says fans who missed the iPhone 5 pre-order event will have a chance to pick up a handset at local retailers on the confirmed iPhone 5 release date -- Friday, September 21. The new iPhone 5 goes on sale starting at 8 a.m. at Apple Store locations. Other retail stores, such as Best Buy and Walmart will have some handsets available as well.

Source : examiner[dot]com