Android 4.2 SDK Is Now Available

We’ve all seen the great new features coming to Android 4.2 by now. The Photo Sphere camera is pretty amazing, and multiple accounts on tablets has been a long time coming. Those features, however, are just the beginning. The new Jelly Bean also has a number of new features that developers will be able to make great use of.

Starting today, developers will be able to download the Android 4.2 SDK platform. It features a number of improvements and new features that developers are sure to do some amazing things with. Here’s the major improvements and features:

Performance
We’ve worked with our partners to run Renderscript computation directly in the GPU on the Nexus 10, a first for any mobile computation platform.

New ways to engage users
Users can now place interactive lock screen widgets directly on their device lock screens, for instant access to favorite apps and content. With just a small update, you can adapt any app widget to run on the lock screen. Daydream is an interactive screensaver mode that users can encounter when their devices are charging or docked in a desk dock. You can create interactive daydreams that users display in this mode, and they can include any type of content.

New interaction and entertainment experiences
Android 4.2 introduces platform support for external displays that goes beyond mirroring. Your apps can now target unique content to any number of displays attached to an Android device.

Enhancements for international users
To help you create better apps for users in languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian, Android 4.2 includes native RTL support, including layout mirroring. With native RTL support, you can deliver the same great app experience to all of your users with minimal extra work. Android 4.2 also includes a variety of font and character optimizations for Korean, Japanese, Indic, Thai, Arabic and Hebrew writing systems.

At the moment, Google’s own Nexus line are the only devices that are equipped with Android 4.2. Most manufacturers and carriers are still trying to catch up to the first iteration of Jelly Bean – Android 4.1. With that being said, developers will most definitely want to start thinking up apps that can take advantage of the advanced GPU in the Nexus 10. That screen is just begging for some amazing audio-visual experiences.

Veteran and novice developers alike can download the Android 4.2 SDK from the Android SDK Manager now. Before you get to that, however, you’ll want to check out the full list of Android 4.2 features and the API level 17 overview

source: internet

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Judge Refuses to Order YouTube to Remove Anti-Islam Film

Click Her to watch video
A California judge refused Thursday to order YouTube to remove controversial footage from “Innocence of Muslims,” the inflammatory film that sparked a U.S. backlash in the Middle East.
A woman who starred in the film, Cindy Lee Garcia, asked a Los Angeles County judge to take down the film because she said she was fired from her job, received death threats and was tricked into starring in the “hateful anti-Islamic production.” The film has possibly led to the killing of J. Chrisopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya and about two dozen others the past week.
Garcia, of California, believed she would be starring in an Arabian desert adventure film, according to her suit. But the 14-minute YouTube trailer produced by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula of Southern California portrays a different story — one of which the prophet Muhammad seemingly engages in oral sex with Garcia’s character.
The woman’s lawyer, Chris Armenta, according to the Los Angeles Times, told Superior Court Judge Luis Lanvin that the dispute is “Not a First Amendment issue. This is an invasion of privacy issue.” She said she would continue to press for the footage’s removal.
It was an unusual request. The primary reason YouTube is asked to remove footage in the United States is because of copyright violations.
The judge, siding with Google, which owns YouTube, said Garcia is not likely to “prevail” on the merits of her lawsuit against Nakoula. Garcia claims he “intentionally concealed the purpose and content of the film.”
The White House had asked YouTube to review the footage to ensure that it comported with the media giant’s terms of service. YouTube did not remove it from U.S.-based viewers. However, YouTube has blocked the film in Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
Google, in response to the White House’s bid, said the film was “clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube.”

source: wired

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Facebook Introduces New Shortcut For Mobile Payments

After a few disappointing weeks without much in the way of major updates, Facebook explodes onto the scene with a huge Operation Developer Love update. There are four major updates coming to the Facebook platform today that developers will want to take advantage of.
Facebook has been pushing the mobile platform a lot recently and today’s update just further cements their dedication to the platform. They’re introducing a new shortcut for mobile payments that will help developers monetize their content on mobile devices. In essence, the new feature allows developers to match their price points with those of mobile transactions imposed by carriers. It also redirects buyers directly to the mobile payment dialog instead of showing the usual Credit Card and PayPal options. Check out the documentation here.
Another change is coming to how Facebook handles platform dialogs across both the desktop and mobile Web versions of the site. All dialogs, including Feed, Pay and Auth, will now open inline by default for Canvas and Page Tab apps. They feel that this provides a better user experience, and it gets past those pesky pop-up blockers. Check out the documentation here.
Access tokens can sometimes be difficult to work with, especially when it comes to checking information that’s associated with them. That’s why Facebook is introducing a new API endpoint that eliminates the need to debug said tokens. Developers will now just have to issue an HTTP GET request to see all the information on any particular access token. Check out the documentation here.
Finally, Facebook wants to remind developers to start using the Payer Promotion Unit in their apps. It’s the special deal where Facebook subsidizes the cost of credits so developers can offer free bonuses to first-time payers. They found that getting somebody to pay for in-game content just once can usually lead to a lifetime of virtual purchases in your game and others. Developers who have already started using the PPU can now advertise their special promotions via a banner on their app’s canvas page. Check out the documentation here.
Like always, Facebook has done a bang-up job of fixing bugs across the site. They report that 187 bugs were submitted this week with 69 being accepted and 27 being fixed. You can check out the full changelog over at the blog post.

source: webpronews

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LinkedIn Gives Career Pages An Overhaul

LinkedIn announced today that it has updated its Career Pages to make it easier to “show off your unique employer brand”.
“As with many LinkedIn products, our goal is to make both our members and talent acquisition customers more successful,” writes LinkedIn’s Thomas Sexton in a blog post. “When candidates are more engaged, more connected with companies, and better able to find their dream jobs, everybody wins. This means designing a page that’s simple and laser-focused on capturing candidates’ attention as soon as they hit the page.”
The new pages feature a large banner image (which seems to be the trend these days).
“We’ve found that candidates care most about personalized jobs, people they know at your company and what you stand for as an employer,” says Sexton. “The new, cleaner page design puts these elements front and center.”
There are also content modules that let you share videos, testimonials, text, etc.
Here’s what they look like:

source: webpronews

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Pakistan cuts off all access to YouTube

Pakistan has now blocked YouTube entirely from the country, after the video sharing site declined to remove the "Innocence of Muslims" trailer that sparked protests throughout the world.
Attempting to browse to the site results in users within Pakistan being redirected to a page that states "this page is blocked due to restrictions enforced by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA)," even if the video is not related to the offending trailer.
The PTA has stated that it was ordered by the Chief Justice of Pakistan to block all anti-Islamic videos. It had previously been provided with a list of 753 anti-Islamic sites, which has now grown to 934 sites.
Google's Transparency Report shows that, at about 7 a.m. AEST (2 p.m. PT), YouTube traffic from Pakistan dropped off dramatically, and states that the site is inaccessible from the country.
Google has not put in place a country-wide block, and has told ZDNet that there are no issues with its network that would prevent Pakistan users from visiting the site.
YouTube has previously stated that the video is "clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube," but the Australian Department of Broadband and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) disagrees with the video remaining online, stating that the video is "clearly offensive" and is calling on Google to "review its terms of service to see if they are being appropriately applied in this case."
"Australia has strong anti-vilification laws. If people believe this video is in breach of these laws, they can make a complaint to Google or the Human Rights Commission," the department said in a statement.
"What people shouldn't do is engage in violent protests on the streets. It is totally unacceptable behaviour and should be condemned."
DBCDE did not respond to queries as to whether it had actually made a request of its own to have the video removed.

source: zdnet

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‘Muslims’ Movie Producer Was Arrested for PCP, Snitched for Feds

Before he was involved in the making of a noxious video that provided an excuse for anti-American riots in the Middle East, and before he was convicted of federal bank fraud, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was arrested on charges relating to the making of angel dust.
Court records reviewed by Danger Room show that Nakoula and a co-defendant were brought before the Los Angeles County Superior Courthouse in Downey, California on April 15, 1997. They were charged with possessing the narcotic’s chemical precursors with “the intent to manufacture phencyclidine,” otherwise known as angel dust or PCP.
In the latest in a series of odd revelations about the man thought to be at center of a viral video, “The Innocence of Muslims,” which has been publicly seized upon by people in Libya, Egypt, and Tunisia as a reason to attack U.S. embassies. At least four American government employees have been killed during the confrontations. And that’s brought enormous scrutiny to Nakoula, an Egyptian immigrant and gas station owner, who has alternatively confirmed and denied a role in the making of “Innocence.”
In recent days, we’ve learned that Nakoula used 14 different aliases — including “P.J. Tobacco” and “Kritbag Difrat” — in a complex check kiting scheme. We’ve learned that Nakoula was sentenced to 21 months in federal custody for the affair. According to The Smoking Gun, Nakoula was released from the the United States Penitentiary in Lompoc, California in September, 2010. He spent the following nine months in and out of a halfway house in Long Beach. Unnamed officials tell ABC News he wrote the script for the film, which depicts the prophet Muhammad as a thug and a child molester, while in prison.
The punishment was relatively gentle, even though it wasn’t Nakoula’s first encounter with the law. That’s because Nakoula had decided to become a federal informant.
“I am sorry for what happened. Now I know it was wrong. I decide to cooperate with the government to retrieve some of those mistakes,” Nakoula told Judge Christina Snyder in June of 2010, according to a sentencing transcript obtained by The Smoking Gun.
The man Nakoula agreed to help the feds catch was Eiad Salameh, the ringleader of the check kiting scheme and “a notorious fraudster who has been tracked for more than a decade by state and federal investigators,” the Smoking Gun says. “In his debriefings, Nakoula said he was recruited as a ‘runner’ by Salameh, who pocketed the majority of money generated by the bank swindles.”
Because of the promised help, because of his many ailments (including Hepatitis C and diabetes) and maybe because of a friendly letter from a friend calling Nakoula “a God-fearing man whose first priority is his family,” Bakoula was sentenced to just 21 months in prison.
That’s in spie of his previous arrests. In August of 1991, he was convicted on two counts of selling watered-down gasoline. And then came the arrest for PCP manufacturing in 1997. A local judge found there was probable cause for the case to continue against Nakoula and a co-defendant, Khaled Yameen Abraham, on August 6th of that year. Nakoula and Abraham were also briefly charged with conspiracy.
Three months later, Abraham was convicted on the PCP charge. Nakoula, on the other hand, was not. Nearly five years later, the case against him was dismissed, for reasons unknown.
According to The Daily Beast, Nakoula and Abraham weren’t just attempting to make PCP. The news site claims that the pair were arrested for trying to mass-produce methamphetamine. Nakoula was arrested on March 27, 1997, according to the Beast, with $45,000 in hundreds and twenties in a paper lunch bag on the seat beside him. Abraham’s house in Lake Elsinore contained 30 boxes of pseudoephedrine, meth’s central ingredient. Another 99 cases were allegedly found at the storage facility. Danger Room hasn’t been able to confirm this account. But it’s entirely possible that Abraham and Nakoula were simultaneously busted for being both PCP and meth makers.

source: wired

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