LG Optimus F6 (T-Mobile)

LG's Optimus F6 ($49.99 up front and $10/month for 24 months or $289.99) has some of the looks of a higher-end phone—the disco-ball reflective pattern on the back evokes LG's Nexus 4, and the brushed-metal highlights on the side are a classy touch. But this Android phone has the performance, storage and capabilities of an older, less-expensive device. You can do better for less on T-Mobile.

Size, Screen, And Storage
At 5.03 by 2.59 by .4 inches (HWD), the 4.44-ounce Optimus F6 is not as wide as many new smartphones—a good thing if you value single-handed use—and barely chunkier. A large physical Home/Power button helps avoid the embarrassment of extracting the phone from your pocket upside-down.

The F6's 4.5-inch, 960-by-540-pixel display can feel more crowded than that size would suggest, however. Credit a joint effort by LG and T-Mobile to clutter the notification menu: The usual strip of wireless-control widgets, LG's "QSlide apps" list, a brightness control, and a T-Mobile widget counting how many voice minutes and text messages you've used all combine to eat up more than half the screen. The last is particularly dumb, since T-Mobile's plans all come with unmetered voice and text usage. Disable it in the T-Mobile My Account App by pressing the menu button and selecting Options.

Yes, Menu button—LG replaced the standard Recent-Apps button with one for the menu function Google has been trying to kick to the curb since Android 3.0. This means you can't invoke Google Now with a simple upward swipe; instead, you must press and hold the Home button to bring up the recent-apps list, then tap the "G" button.

You can pry off the back to expose a removable 2,460mAh battery, micro SIM slot, and microSD card slot. Filling the latter should be your first priority, as the F6 ships with an advertised 4GB of storage but offers only 1.1GB for use out of the box. That's borderline cruel, and also a silly way to save a few bucks—phone vendors routinely hand out press kits on giveaway 4GB flash drives.

Calls, Battery Life, and Bandwidth
Voice quality is a mixed bag. Incoming calls sounded fine, but my own voice sounded just a bit muddy—more so via the microphone than in speakerphone mode—in voicemails left from the F6. Whispers didn't come through at all; other phones I've tried haven't had that issue. Noise cancellation suppressed all but the higher notes of a whirring engine, although the resulting background whine wasn't too fun to listen to.

Like some other Android phones I've tested, the F6 had a hang-up with Bluetooth voice dialing: When I spoke a contact's name through a Plantronics hands-free kit, the phone heard me clearly. But it repeatedly heard phone numbers as unrelated people's names.

I cannot, however, complain much about battery life here. It lasted for 15 hours and 3 minutes of talk time. That's not as good as T-Mobile's estimate of 19.5 hours but still far better than average. After being left idle for 24 hours, the F6 showed 91 percent charge left; that's also great.

The F6 connected to T-Mobile's LTE network with excellent results—the Speedtest.net app clocked a stellar download speed of 47.01 Mbps in Santa Clara, Calif., with an upload speed of 9.5 Mbps. As a backup to that, you've got T-Mobile's also speedy HSPA+ and the option to connect to WiFi's a, b, g, and n flavors, 5GHz networks included.

Camera, Connectivity, and Apps
The most obviously cut corner here after the inadequate storage would be the mediocre 5-megapixel back camera. Its still images exhibited problems with focusing and cast a gauzy glow around bright or backlit objects that made me think "2009 camera phone."

The front camera, with only 1.3 MP of resolution, has the same problems. And videos from either side looked even worse, maxing out at about 20 frames per second in indoor shots. The back camera's touted 1080p resolution seemed too much for its older, slower processor to properly encode, judging by the blurring that wasn't such a problem in the front camera's 720p video.

The long and often redundant list of add-on apps—once again, an Android vendor has seen fit to install both Google's Chrome and a lesser browser, then throw in task-manager and file-manager utilities that most Android users don't need—hides a few interesting surprises. A QuickRemote app can turn the phone into a remote for a TV or a cable box, although it failed to recognize a 2009-vintage Sony HDTV, and an LG Backup app can save your apps and settings to a microSD card.

The LG Gallery app played a QuickTime movie, something stock Android can't do. And under the Display category of LG's version of the Settings app, you can also enable "Smart Screen," which keeps the screen lit if the phone sees your eyes focused on it. You may also want to jump into the "Language & Input" category to disable the distracting "blam-blam" noises made by the LG keyboard's haptic feedback.

This thing is also on the sluggish side—it benchmarked not much faster than the 2011-vintage Galaxy S II—and needless visual effects like the way app icons and widgets bounce into view as you shuffle from home screen to another add to the lag factor.

Conclusions
An unsubsidized price of less than $300 is hard to ignore, but T-Mobile has better cheap choices. For instance, if you can do without a front camera, LG's own Optimus F3 is $50 cheaper and a good deal more compact, while the $120 Nokia Lumia 521 offers a cleaner Windows Phone interface free of aftermarket trimmings, albeit with a considerably smaller selection of apps.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/LmddTEb9bNo/0,2817,2426301,00.asp
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Polaroid Toilet Paper Holder Captures Memories You Don't Want To Keep

Even though digital cameras provide us the same instant gratification after snapping a photo, Polaroid's instant snapper still has a cult following. Of course, that also means that instant film is more expensive than ever, so if you're just a fan of the Polaroid camera's iconic design, this Pola Roll toilet paper holder is a cheaper way to keep one around for posterity.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/xjoeuhaPEF8/polaroid-toilet-paper-holder-captures-memories-you-don-1452225980
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Katharine McPhee Affair May Have Ended 2 Marriages

Smash was cancelled this spring, but the drama continues for Katharine McPhee! The star of the musical drama, who is married to producer Nick Cokas, was caught by paparazzi on Sunday kissing former Smash director Michael Morris. Morris is also married, to actress Mary McCormack. As you can imagine, this is getting messy.
Source: http://www.ivillage.com/katharine-mcphee-caught-kissing-married-director-michael-morris/1-a-550777?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Akatharine-mcphee-caught-kissing-married-director-michael-morris-550777
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Row Over Stilton Could Cause A Stink

The British government has told a pub in the village of Stilton that it can't call its cheese Stilton. The name is protected by a law that says true Stilton cheese can come from three specific regions — not Cambridgeshire, where Stilton is located. The pub's landlord is weighing his legal options.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/25/240692890/row-over-stilton-could-cause-a-stink?ft=1&f=3
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Hong Kong Directors Guild Boss Calls 'Transformers 4' Incident 'Ridiculous'

Hong Kong police are holding a suspected Triad gang member on suspicion of attempting to extort money from the crew on the set of Transformers: Age of Extinction, the second attempt in five days to blackmail the Paramount Pictures crew during filming in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong Directors Guild president Derek Yee Tung-sing told the South China Morning Post newspaper that the incident was "ridiculous" and "more unusual than getting a jackpot."

PHOTOS: Power Lawyers: 'Star Trek's' JJ Abrams, Michael Bay and Les Moonves Pose With Their Attorneys

On Thursday (Oct. 17) last week, the director of the fourth installment in the franchise, Michael Bay, and several crewmembers escaped injury after they were assaulted by a man wielding an air-conditioning unit as a weapon. Two brothers were arrested after allegedly demanding $13,000 (HK$100,000) from the crew.

Hong Kong is a famously safe city and there have been no cases of blackmail or extortion on film crews in recent years since a major crackdown on the organized crime tactic decades ago, although in some film productions, security sources say that unofficial "protection money" payments are made.

Police are looking for three alleged racketeers in connection with the latest case, which happened on the roof of a residential block in To Kwa Wan Road in the city at about 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday (Oct. 22), the newspaper reported.

According to police, the four men allegedly approached and demanded money from the crew, who were assessing the site at the time. The crew immediately called police.

STORY: Michael Bay Attacked on 'Transformers 4' Set in Hong Kong

Officers arrested a 35-year-old Hong Kong man but the other three men escaped. A police source said the man was a suspected Triad criminal gang member.

The producers have worked hard to push the movie as a China-U.S. co-production, thereby allowing it to sidestep the Chinese import quota and also take a bigger share of box office earnings in what is now the second-biggest source of box office revenue in the world.

The 2011 smash hit Transformers: Dark of the Moon took $165 million of its $1.1 billion worldwide take in China.

Transformers: Age of Extinction stars Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Li Bingbing and Han Geng and is due in theaters on June 27, 2014.

Four young Chinese actors were chosen to play supporting roles in Transformers: Age of Extinction in a reality TV show aired on state broadcaster CCTV's Movie Channel on Aug. 31.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/news/~3/ig6hoaVW32U/hong-kong-transformers-4-attack-650836
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Pen Pal Of Young 'Jerry' Salinger May Have Been First To Meet Holden

J.D. Salinger wrote nine letters and postcards to aspiring Canadian writer Marjorie Sheard.

Graham Haber/The Morgan Library & Museum

J.D. Salinger wrote nine letters and postcards to aspiring Canadian writer Marjorie Sheard.

Graham Haber/The Morgan Library & Museum

Fans of the reclusive J.D. Salinger are in their element these days. The writer, who died in 2010, is the subject of a recent documentary and companion biography; there's word that five Salinger works will be published for the first time, starting in 2015; and now, the Morgan Library in New York is showing never-before displayed letters that a 20-something Salinger wrote, from 1941 to 1943, to a young admirer in Toronto.

For Salinger buffs, this is like a glimpse of the holy grail: seven letters and two postcards, mostly typed, two handwritten. Salinger's handwriting is slanted and spiky.

"He's writing quickly. He may have been writing this in a bar," says curator Declan Kiely. "The thing that jumps out at me is the way he forms 'I.' "

In a sea of cursives, Salinger prints his "I" — it looks like the Roman numeral one. He makes a strong vertical line and two horizontals.

Salinger, shown here in September 1961, comes off as both diffident and confident in his letters to Sheard.

AP

Salinger, shown here in September 1961, comes off as both diffident and confident in his letters to Sheard.

AP

"They're really emphatic," Kiely says.

And he underlines his name — sometimes with one line, sometimes two.

"You see Dickens doing this, you see Edgar Allen Poe doing this," observes Kiely, who is head of the Department of Literary and Historical Manuscripts at the Morgan Library. "A lot of male writers have what I would call a sort of architectural support."

Salinger Before Catcher in the Rye

Salinger's first letter to Marjorie Sheard is dated Sept. 4, 1941.

"Dear Miss Sheard," he writes. "Your warm, bright letter just reached me. Thanks very much. It's unfair to authors that you write only to Aldous Huxley and me."

Sheard had written to praise stories of Salinger's that she'd seen in Esquire and Collier's magazines. Like Salinger, she was in her early 20s and wanted to write fiction. He gives her advice: "Why don't you try writing something for Mademoiselle or one of the other feminine magazines? Seems to me you have the instincts to avoid the usual Vassar-girl tripe those mags publish."

He put his parents' address (1133 Park Ave., on 91st Street in Manhattan) in the upper right corner. He has typed the letter neatly — no cross-outs or erasures.

"He would have made a great secretary," Kiely says, smilingly.

Salinger, clearly thrilled to get a fan letter this early in his writing career, ends his note this way: "I hope you'll always read my work with pleasure. So glad you liked the Esquire piece. I write for Marjorie Sheard and a few others. The fact that Esquire's circulation is 600,000, and Collier's is in millions is purely coincidental."

Kiely thinks these letters reveal who Salinger was before Catcher in the Rye made him a literary star.

"He's a combination of diffidence and confidence," he says. "He is right at the very beginning, but he knows that he's onto something."

He's also witty. Later in their correspondence, after Salinger has been drafted and is waiting to be shipped overseas from Army basic training in Georgia, this Upper East Side prep school fellow writes, "Can't you just picture me leading me little platoon over the top? You boys go ahead. I'll meet you at the Biltmore under the clock."

An Early Hint At Holden

And who was she, Miss Marjorie Sheard of Toronto? Only one of her letters to him survives. In a P.P.S. she provides some "vital statistics" — a list of her likes: "Drinking beer, also rum; Sunday afternoon cocktail parties; flirting; dancing in a too-high, too-crowded place; white evening gowns; men who are tall, dark and dangerous; writing letters to Jerry Salinger. My father's a lawyer who plays the cello and writes musical criticisms. My mother is extremely beautiful. My brother is crotchety and practical, but I like him."

Marjorie Sheard was only slightly older than Salinger. Only one of her letters to him survives.

The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Marjorie Sheard Carter

Marjorie Sheard was only slightly older than Salinger. Only one of her letters to him survives.

The Morgan Library & Museum, Gift of Marjorie Sheard Carter

Sheard was slightly older than Salinger. (His correspondence with teenage girls would come later). Her niece, Sarah Sheard, says Marjorie was quiet and shy. But she had a real writer's voice in that flirtatious P.P.S. A month after his first letter, Salinger is getting curious.

"Dear Marjorie," he writes. "Excuse the delay but I've been up to here and still am. Thanks for writing. What do you look like? Send a huge photo."

She does. In profile, the photograph reveals a nice straight nose and wavy dark hair that flows down her back.

On Nov. 18, 1941, Salinger writes, "Sneaky girl. You're pretty." That same letter also has news: After many rejections, The New Yorker magazine has accepted one of his stories. He tells her it's about a prep school kid on Christmas vacation.

"Let me know what you think of the first Holden story, called 'Slight Rebellion Off Madison,' " he writes. "Best, Jerry S."

Curator Declan Kiely says that November 1941 letter may be the most valuable in this collection.

"It could well be that Marjorie Sheard was one of the first people who learned of the creation of the character Holden Caulfield," he says.

The story was scheduled to run Christmas week, 1941. But it would be another five years before readers actually met Holden, the character who became the hero of Catcher in the Rye and one of the most beloved figures in fiction. The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor a month after Jerry wrote Marjorie about the New Yorker acceptance. Editors decided, given the circumstances, that the "Holden story" was "unpublishable."

A Coquettish Correspondent

Sarah Sheard says her aunt Marjorie never talked about her pen pal and mentor.

"She was a little coquettish about it," Sheard says. "She would sort of bat her eyes and say, 'Well, you know, I did have this brief, you know, exchange with J.D. Salinger.' Jerry Salinger, she called him."

She saved all the letters, and agreed the family could sell them to pay for the Toronto nursing home where she died last May, just before her 95th birthday.

Marjorie Sheard never published any fiction, but she did have a 30-year career writing advertising. Her young 1940s correspondent became one of the world's best-known authors.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/22/239864193/pen-pal-of-young-jerry-salinger-may-have-been-first-to-meet-holden?ft=1&f=3
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Rubinius seeks to modernize, not bury, the Ruby language

All appearances of condemnation aside, proponents of the Rubiniux X project are embarking on an effort to modernize the Ruby language, bringing it into the Internet era and focusing on improved concurrency.

A glance at the recent formal announcement of Rubinius X could give the impression it was written by a Ruby antagonist, as it belittles the language, saying, "Ruby is a dying language. Business is over its dalliance with Ruby. No major startup is lauding their use of Ruby, and existing businesses are migrating away or simply writing new applications in a different language."

But the engineer who unveiled Rubinius X, Brian Shirai, of Engine Yard, emphasized he is an advocate, not an opponent: "I love Ruby. I think it's a fantastic language."

Ruby, he said, is more accessible than newer languages like Scala, but it needs to be brought into the networked, Internet era. "The motivating idea behind Rubinius X today is that there are no computers that do anything interesting without talking to at least one other computer. The Internet is forever." But Ruby's core library was built back in the Windows 3.0 days in the 1990s, before Internet dominance, Shirai added. Rubinius X is focused on the writing of collaborative, concurrent applications.

Recently, Ruby founder Yukihiro Matsumoto said he saw no need for major improvements to Ruby in his CRuby implementation, but Rubinius X advocates will continue overhauling the language anyway. Rubinius X builds on Rubinius, an implementation of Ruby that also stressed concurrency via native threads, but version 10 takes concurrency a step further. "More than any specific feature in Rubinius X, it is that the entire system is being reworked from the bottom up to support the highest degree of concurrency and parallelism possible," Shirai said. "Certain APIs are being changed, further concurrency abstractions are being added, and all of this is built-in, instead of being an afterthought relegated to the 'standard library' or other libraries."

Key features of Rubinius X for concurrency include promises and nonblocking I/O. "Promises are a more modern mechanism for concurrency," Shirai said. Promises refer to constructs used for synchronizing in some languages, in which an object acts a proxy for result that is initially unknown, often because the computation of its value is not yet complete.

Version X also is slated to include persistent and concurrent data structures, as well as mirrors and object capabilities. Mirrors are a construct providing structure for composition through encapsulation and separation of object and meta-data object operations, according to Rubiniux X advocates; object capabilities structure interactions to control collaboration. Code-loading in Rubinius X, meanwhile, enables the combining of components into a single, running program.

Matsumoto gave an endorsement to Rubinius X, despite the criticism heaped on Ruby itself. "I am a true believer of diversity," he said. "So I consider Rubinius itself diversity." But Matsumoto said he was not sure Rubinius would survive. Still, he expects it to enrich the Ruby ecosystem.

"[Shirai] claimed 'Ruby is a dying language,' but as long as Ruby continues evolving, [including Rubinius], I think it will keep growing."

This story, "Rubinius seeks to modernize, not bury, the Ruby language," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest developments in business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.

Source: http://www.infoworld.com/t/ruby-rails/rubinius-seeks-modernize-not-bury-the-ruby-language-229445?source=rss_infoworld_blogs
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