Canon VIXIA Mini Compact Personal Camcorder

If shooting and posting video is your thing, the all-new VIXIA mini is for you – an innovative personal camcorder designed to help you share your talents and interests with the world. The VIXIA mini is super slim and weighs approximately 5.6 ounces, so you can capture beautiful, high-quality video and stills wherever you go. To match its outstanding image quality, the VIXIA mini features a built-in microphone to liven and enhance your video with superb stereo sound. Get creative with a genuine Canon f/2.8 fisheye lens for ultra-wide scenes (160° video/170° stills) that play with perspective, then switch to Close-up mode simply by touching the screen. Capture clear images even in low light with the Canon HS SYSTEM, which combines the 12.8 Megapixel High-Sensitivity CMOS sensor and Canon DIGIC DV 4 Image Processor. Shoot Full HD video in MP4 format for easy sharing, and record to convenient micro SD/SDHC/SDXC cards. Built-in Wi-Fi® makes sharing on blogs and social networking sites easy; you can even shoot remotely and live stream. The tiltable 2.7-inch capacitive touch panel LCD, adjustable integrated stand and tripod socket make self-shooting effortless. Cool features abound, like Mirror Image Recording/Playback, Slow Motion, Fast Motion and Interval Recording, and new Food & Fashion, Sports and Macro Special Scene modes. The VIXIA mini is ready to shoot when you are, with an automatic lens cover that opens when you power on. Use the VIXIA mini to express yourself in creative ways and let yourself shine like a star!

Princeton researchers use mobile phones to measure happiness

Researchers at Princeton University are developing ways to use mobile phones to explore how one’s environment influences one’s sense of well-being.

In a study involving volunteers who agreed to provide information about their feelings and locations, the researchers found that cell phones can efficiently capture information that is otherwise difficult to record, given today’s on-the-go lifestyle. This is important, according to the researchers, because feelings recorded “in the moment” are likely to be more accurate than feelings jotted down after the fact.

To conduct the study, the team created an application for the Android operating system that documented each person’s location and periodically sent the question, “How happy are you?”

The investigators invited people to download the app, and over a three-week period, collected information from 270 volunteers in 13 countries who were asked to rate their happiness on a scale of 0 to 5. From the information collected, the researchers created and fine-tuned methods that could lead to a better understanding of how our environments influence emotional well-being. The study was published in the June issue ofDemography.

The mobile phone method could help overcome some of the limitations that come with surveys conducted at people’s homes, according to the researchers. Census measurements tie people to specific areas — the census tracts in which they live — that are usually not the only areas that people actually frequent.

“People spend a significant amount of time outside their census tracks,” said John Palmer, a graduate student in the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the paper’s lead author. “If we want to get more precise findings of contextual measurements we need to use techniques like this.”

Palmer teamed up with Thomas Espenshade, professor of sociology emeritus, and Frederic Bartumeus, a specialist in movement ecology at the Center for Advanced Studies of Blanes in Spain, along with Princeton’s Chang Chung, a statistical programmer and data archivist in the Office of Population Research; Necati Ozgencil, a former Professional Specialist at Princeton; and Kathleen Li, who earned her undergraduate degree in computer science from Princeton in 2010, to design the free, open source application for the Android platform that would record participants’ locations at various intervals based on either GPS satellites or cellular tower signals.

Though many of the volunteers lived in the United States, some were in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

Palmer noted that the team’s focus at this stage was not on generalizable conclusions about the link between environment and happiness, but rather on learning more about the mobile phone’s capabilities for data collection. “I’d be hesitant to try to extend our substantive findings beyond those people who volunteered.” he said.

However, the team did obtain some preliminary results regarding happiness: for example, male subjects tended to describe themselves as less happy when they were further from their homes, whereas females did not demonstrate a particular trend with regards to emotions and distance.

“One of the limitations of the study is that it is not representative of all people,” Palmer said. Participants had to have smartphones and be Internet users. It is also possible that people who were happy were more likely to respond to the survey. However, Palmer said, the study demonstrates the potential for mobile phone research to reach groups of people that may be less accessible by paper surveys or interviews.

Palmer’s doctoral dissertation will expand on this research, and his adviser Marta Tienda, the Maurice P. During Professor in Demographic Studies, said she was excited to see how it will impact the academic community. “His applied research promises to redefine how social scientists understand intergroup relations on many levels,” she said.

iOS App finds almost half of other apps access private data

Almost half of the mobile apps running on Apple’s iOS operating system access the unique identifier of the devices where they’re downloaded, computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have found.

In addition, more than 13 percent access the devices’ location and more than 6 percent the address book. The researchers developed a new app that detects what data the other apps running on an iOS device are trying to access.
The findings are based on a study of 130,000 users of jailbroken iOS devices, where users have purposefully removed restrictions that keep apps from accessing the iPhone’s operating system. Most apps in the study were downloaded from Apple’s App Store and access the same type of information on unlocked, jailbroken, phones and on locked phones, said Yuvraj Agarwal, a research scientist in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego, who co-authored the study with fellow researcher Malcolm Hall. Agarwal will present the findings at ACM MobiSys, the premier mobile systems conference, which takes place June 25 to 28 in Taipei, Taiwan.
The findings suggest that although Apple’s App Store no longer accepts new apps or app updates that access the unique identifier as of March of this year, many apps can still get a hold of that information. The unique identifier allows app vendors and advertisers to track users’ behaviors across all the different apps on their devices, including iPhones, iPads and iPods. In addition, some apps can associate the unique identifier with the user’s email and other personal information.
The researchers believe that it’s the first time anyone has done such an extensive privacy study focused on iOS-based apps across a large user population.
The ProtectMyPrivacy App
To carry out their study, researchers developed an app of their own, called ProtectMyPrivacy, or PMP. It lets users know what personal information the other apps on their devices are trying to access. PMP enables users to selectively allow or deny access to this information on an app-by-app basis, based on whether they feel the apps need the information to function properly—for example, a map app needs to access the location of a device to provide driving directions. iOS devices currently notify users when apps try to access location, photos and contacts. But they do not notify users when apps access the unique identifier or music library and users can’t deny access to those two pieces of information.
Since gathering data for the study, researchers have also added notifications and recommendations for when an app accesses other privacy-sensitive information, such as a devices’ front and back camera, microphone and photos.
PMP also makes recommendations about whether to allow the other apps to access user data, based on an extensive crowdsourcing ‘recommendation engine’ that compiles the privacy decisions made by other users.
“We wanted to empower users to take control of their privacy,” said Agarwal, who is also an alumnus of UC San Diego’s Jacobs School of Engineering. “The choice should be in users’ hands.”
For locked devices, researchers are currently providing a web page that tells users which information more than 150 apps for iOS—some of the most popular—are trying to access and gives recommendations about whether to allow or deny access. The page can be viewed at http://www.protectmyprivacy.org/liveview/
For example, Facebook, the most popular app, accesses the devices’ identifier, location and contacts. PMP’s crowdsourcing engine recommends denying access to the identifier and contacts music, but allowing access to location.
Findings by the numbers
ProtectMyPrivacy has already been downloaded from the Cydia store by more than 130,000 users since March 2012. Its users have downloaded and used more than 225,000 unique apps from Apple’s App Store. The researchers analyzed the data accessed by those apps and found that 48.1 percent of them accessed the device’s unique identifier; 13.2 percent the location information; 6.2 percent the address book; and 1.6 percent the music library.
As of January 2013, Apple reported that it had sold 500 million iOS devices. Estimates of how many are jailbroken vary, but Forbes reported in February 2013 that seven million devices had been jailbroken in just four days after a new jailbreaking tool was released. Cydia, an app store that caters only to jailbroken devices, had 23 million users as of March 2013 –a sizeable portion of Apple’s mobile devices.
Read the full paper here.
Recommendations to protect your privacy
Almost all of PMP’s users—99 percent– voluntarily shared their privacy decisions, indicating which apps they think should be allowed—or denied—access to their privacy-sensitive data. These decisions – which are contributed anonymously – are then processed on PMP servers to generate the crowdsourced privacy recommendations shown to users. As a result, PMP is able to make recommendations for 97 percent of the 10,000 most popular iPhone apps. “We have already shown millions of recommendations, and more than two-thirds of all our recommendations are accepted by our users, showing that they really like this unique feature of PMP,” said Agarwal. Users chose to deny access to one or more pieces of sensitive data for 48.1 percent of apps.
The version of PMP available in the Cydia store gives users the option to feed fictitious or anonymized information to nosy apps. Examples include an address book filled with made-up entries, a random location that may be in a completely different country, and a randomly generated unique identifier.
The researchers say that they do not recommend jailbreaking your iPhone to install PMP, because doing so could potentially leave a user open to other vulnerabilities. But in order to conduct their research, they needed to be able to intercept information about the privacy-protected data that apps were accessing. This required low-level access to the operating system, which is not technically possible on locked, non-jailbroken, iOS devices.

Sometimes, it is not the apps themselves that access the data, but a third-party library or code contained within the apps. For example, Flixster, a popular app for movie reviews and recommendations, in its 5.2 version, was flagged for accessing some private data. Flixster contacted Agarwal and Hall to say that it does no such thing. The computer scientists did some digging and found that a third-party ad library used by the app was accessing users’ address books and sending back information. “We provided feedback to the app’s developers in case they are unaware that a third party library may be accessing their users’ private data,” recalled Hall, a visiting researcher in Agarwal’s Synergy Lab at UC San Diego. He also pointed out that “an updated version of Flixster now uses another ad library that does not access this kind of information.”
Agarwal and Hall tried submitting to the Apple Store a “lite” version of their app that wouldn’t interact with the iOS operating system, but the app was rejected. That version would have given users information about the data specific apps access and recommendations about what to allow and deny. It would not have given users the ability to protect their data by providing fictitious information.
Agarwal will join the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University as an assistant professor in the fall.

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 rumoured for 5.99-inch 1080p display, octa-core processor

Itching for the latest scuttlebutt on the Samsung Galaxy Note 3? There are some more details as to the specs of the device thanks to SamMobile. The site believes that the next iteration of the device will fit a 5.99-inch 1080p panel into roughly the same dimensions as the Galaxy Mega 5.8. How exactly is Samsung going to pull that off? By shrinking down the bezel on the Note 3 as much as possible. It’s the same tactic that the company used for the Galaxy S4. The South Korean manufacturer managed to slim down the bezel on the design of the handset to accommodate a 5-inch panel, a slight bump from the 4.8-inch display of the Galaxy S III. As for the display tech itself, SamMobile believes that once again Samsung will use Super AMOLED technology in a similar pixel arrangement to the Galaxy S4.

Other specifications are said to include an Exynos octa-core processor along with 3GB of RAM and a 13-megapixel camera, most likely the same sensor found on the Galaxy S4. In addition, the Note 3 may feature an even more powerful octa-core Mali 450 GPU. Just like previous rumours indicated, the device will run the latest version of Android, most likely 4.3 given recent indicators.

SamMobile closes by saying that the Galaxy Note 3 could be announced either in August or September. The most likely scenario is for Samsung to unveil the handset at IFA 2013, as the company announced the Galaxy Note II at the same event last year.

Lenovo K900 launching in India May 10 carrying a sub-Rs. 25,000 (440 USD) price tag

Lenovo K900, the 5.5-inch phablet with Intel's dual-core Clover Trail+ processor inside, is set to launch in India on May 10 at a "very aggressive price", NDTV Gadgets has learnt from its sources.

The India launch will be accompanied by a huge marketing push by the company, likely a TV campaign for the K900 corresponding with the final stages of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL). While the exact launch price isn't known yet, our sources have revealed that K900 is likely to be priced in the sub-Rs. 25,000 (~$460) category, making it an excellent value for money proposition given the power it packs under the hood.

Lenovo K900 was first showcased at CES earlier this year. The K900 packs in Intel's dual-core Clover Trail+ platform, specifically the Intel Atom Z2580 dual-core processor clocking in at 2GHz. The device features a full-HD display, 2GB RAM and is expected to come with 16GB of internal storage.

The phablet comes with 13-megapixel rear camera with a new Sony Exmor BSI sensor and a 2-megapixel front camera. It is expected to ship with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean.

Earlier this month, benchmarks featuring the device surfaced online, which showed the Lenovo K900 rubbing shoulders with the Samsung Galaxy S4 as far as pure benchmarks are concerned.

Having this much power at 50-60% of the cost of the Samsung Galaxy S4 will surely excite prospective customers, though Lenovo will have to address issues like brand image and dealer network, for the device to gain traction in the India market.

Lenovo K900 key specifications

5.5-inch 1080p IPS capacitive touch display
Intel Atom Z2580 2GHz dual-core processor (Clover Trail+)
2GB RAM
16GB internal storage
13-megapixel camera with Sony's Exmor BSI sensor
2-megapixel front camera
Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean

LG Optimus GK Comes With 5-Inch Display.

Is it just me, or do South Korean smartphone manufacturers just love the option of having plenty of choice when it comes to the kind of mobile communications device that you use? Take the Samsung Galaxy S series for instance, we have seen more than our fair share of different variants of a particular model, and LG is not absolved from this particular phenomenon, too, if you would allow me to call it just that. The LG Optimus G, for instance, has just received a new variant which specifically targets folks living in South Korea, where this new model is called the LG Optimus GK.

The LG Optimus GK is said to be similar to the one-off Optimus G Pro which arrived in Japan via NTT DoCoMo, where it would see features such as a 1.7GHz Snapdragon 600 processor and 2GB RAM being crammed into a more manageable 5” form factor, but fret not, the Full HD display has not been tampered in any way other than the size, where it boasts a pixel density of 440ppi. Other hardware specifications include a 3,100mAh battery, 16GB of internal memory, a microSD memory card slot and a 13-megapixel camera at the back and a 2-megapixel front-facing shooter.

Google's Eric Schmidt admits talking to Glass is 'the weirdest thing'

We're still getting to grips with an Explorer edition of Google's Glass ourselves, but Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has noted that Glass may take some getting used to. Talking to an audience on Thursday at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, he said that alongside the unusual sensation of voice control, people would have to develop new etiquette to deal with the fact that incoming wearables like Google Glass would be able to capture images and access information at whim. "There are obviously places where Google Glasses are inappropriate,"

he said, while stifling a cheeky wink