Thursday, November 27, 2014 is Thanksgiving Day; the beginning of Thanksgiving Weekend.
We’re all spending times with our family and friends and will be back on Monday, December 1, 2014.
What The Hell, Twitter?
Jack Marshall, writing for WSJ.com:
Twitter is now collecting information about the apps installed on users’ devices in order to better target and tailor advertising and other content to them.
WHAT?!
From Twitter:
To help build a more personal Twitter experience for you, we are collecting and occasionally updating the list of apps installed on your mobile device so we can deliver tailored content that you might be interested in.
DFQ?!
If you’re not interested in a tailored experience you can adjust your preferences at any time (read below). Additionally, if you have previously opted out of interest-based ads by turning on “Limit Ad Tracking” on your iOS device or by adjusting your Android device settings to “Opt out of interest-based ads,” we will not collect your apps unless you adjust your device settings.
I have always enabled the “Limit Ad Tracking” option on all of my iOS devices.
Megapixel per se
Joanna Stern, writing for WSJ.com:
A quick camera reminder: Looking at the megapixel numbers when comparing phones won’t help you at all. An 8-megapixel camera with a superior sensor can take far better photos, even more detailed ones, than a 21-megapixel camera with an inferior one.
I’m really glad to see Joanna Stern mentions this. For years, a lot of so-called Tech Journalists still measuring the quality of a camera by the pixel-count alone.
Some few years ago, a clerk/salesperson at a store that shall remain nameless adamantly told me that a 13-Megapixel point-and-shoot camera captured better image than an 8-Megapixel DSLR Camera.
On a personal note, Joanna Stern lost one point for using the term “phablet” for a product category. Just call it a big-ass phones and it would’ve sound much better.
Android 5.0 Lollipop Arrives on Nexus 4
Sometimes on Monday, November 23, 2014, my Nexus 4 informed me that Android 5.0 Lollipop is ready for download.
I’m glad that my Nexus 4 did not suffer the similar fate with my Nexus 7; it is actually usable.
Android 5.0 Lollipop Factory Image for Nexus 4 (occam) is available from Google.
All I see is (RED)
Apple teams up with (RED)® again on World AIDS Day, select Apps on the iTunes App Store are turning (RED).
Handbrake 0.10.0
Handbrake, the Open-Source tool for converting video, has reach a version 0.10.0. Yes, it is Handbrake 0.10.0.
Encoders
We are introducing several new encoders with this release and replacing others.
- Intel QuickSync Video
is a hardware based H.264 encoder that is available on Intel CPUs. Currently, QSV is only supported on Windows but we hope to bring this to Linux users in the future. Thanks to the good people at Intel for making this possible!- H.265
is now available through x265 1.4. While this encoder is still fairly new, we have seen some promising results come out of it. It’s still under heavy active development and is only going to improve over time!- VP8
using the libvpx encoder. We have now deprecated Theora (VP3) in favour of VP8 which is a more modern encoder offering better quality encodes at lower file sizes.- LibFaac
Has now officially been removed due to GPL compatibility issues, and replaced with the libav AAC encoder as the new default for Windows and Linux. In addition, we have added the FDK AAC encoder for Windows and Linux as a optional compile-time option. The Mac release will continue to use CoreAudio as the default.- As usual, we’ve updated a number of the core libraries including x264 and libav
Handbrake is available for OS X, Ubuntu and Windows.
As a content creator, I certainly am thankful to the people who have been working on Handbrake.
Google Chrome Crashes in OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 Beta
From Chromium Project:
Steps to reproduce the problem:
1. Open Chrome.
2. Attempt to interact with the browser in any way.What is the expected behavior?
Browser should work.What went wrong?
The browser crashes completely on every start attempt.
After further investigation, it seems the crash happens when built-in Trackpad or Magic Trackpad is used to interact with Google Chrome on any Macs running OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 build 14C68k.
#9 Mike.Had…@gmail.com
-[NSTouch _initWithPreviousTouch:newPhase:position:isResting:]: unrecognized selector sent to instanceisResting Available in OS X v10.6 through OS X v10.9
ie deprecated in 10.10 Yosemite and looks like removed in 10.10.2
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppKit/Reference/NSTouch_Class/index.html
We’ll see if this issue would be resolved in the next build of OS X Yosemite 10.10.2 seed.