Latitude Leaderboard: Does Google Want to Be the New Foursquare?

Google is expanding its reach across social media — first with Google+, now with Leaderboard, a new feature allowing users to earn points for checking in to a location via Google Latitude.

Last week, Google launched an updated version of Google Maps for Android, equipped with the new feature similar to Foursquare.

The company hasn’t officially said it wants to compete against Foursquare. Leaderboard’s addition to Google Latitude has been kept hush-hush. Google doesn’t even list Leaderboard as being a new feature on the Android Google Maps update. It only says it fixed bugs and has “improved battery performance for Latitude and Location History users.” Leaderboard is only available on the latest version of Google Maps, and not everyone has access to the feature yet.

We tested the new version of Google Maps with the Latitude Leaderboards on an Android smartphone. It is only accessible after a user checks in somewhere using Google Latitude. Maps users can share their location — as they have for the past year — with Google’s Latitude app. After check-in, the user earns points and is navigated to the Leaderboard page, which ranks the user and his or her Google+ friends. There is also a global page that ranks all users based on points from check-ins. The person with the most points earns a crown above his or her No. 1 ranking. Leaderboard doesn’t have a mayor, like Foursquare.

Do you use check-in apps? Would you leave Foursquare for Google’s Latitude Leaderboard?

Microsoft SkyDrive Desktop Clients, Additional Storage Spotted

The cloud, that’s where every big tech company under the sun is heading to. Cloud storage recently came into focus again with rumors that Google would launch their long awaited Google Drive service in the near future.

Microsoft has been one step ahead of Google with SkyDrive, the company’s cloud hosting, document management and media publishing service. The storage space SkyDrive is offering is considerably larger than that of popular comparable services such as Dropbox.

SkyDrive did however lack features that made the service less usable. Probably the biggest were missing desktop clients for Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Only mobile clients are offered directly by Microsoft to SkyDrive users. And while third party applications like SkyDrive Explorer integrate the service into the operating system, it is not the same as a first party data synchronization client.

Users of the Brazilian website Gemind have noticed that Microsoft is now advertising PC and Mac SkyDrive clients on the site.

Note that the announcement refers to a SkyDrive application for PC and MAC explicitly, which suggests that this has nothing to do with Windows Live Mesh. A Dropbox like client that would synchronize local data with SkyDrive automatically would definitely improve the functionality of Microsoft’s cloud hosting service. Considering that SkyDrive offers document management capabilities that Dropbox does not offer, it is fair to say that Microsoft may be at an advantage here, provided that the client is equally impressive as the Dropbox client.

The Brazilian site furthermore noticed that Microsoft is offering options to increase the available SkyDrive space. A screenshot reveals that the company plans to offer 20, 50 and 100 Gigabyte storage plans for $11, $27 and $54 per year.

Microsoft clearly has the intention to position SkyDrive as a Dropbox, Apple iCloud and Google Drive competitor. The addition of desktop applications and storage plans will resolve two usability issues that have held SkyDrive back in comparison to other cloud hosting services. It remains to be seen how effective the desktop applications are when it comes to synchronizing data. For now though, it looks like a great addition.

LG Optimus LTE Tag Customizes Itself Using NFC Stickers

LG has upgraded its LG Optimus LTE Android smartphone with NFC and a very interesting feature, which automatically changes the device’s settings depending on the context.

LG calls this new feature LG Tag+ (hence the name of the new device, LG Optimus LTE Tag), and it’s similar to Sony’s programmable SmartTags. It uses NFC (Near Field Communication) to communicate with special stickers or “tags” which you can stick pretty much anywhere – on your desk or the dashboard of the car, for example.

Then, you can program the phone to change its settings depending on the tag it last communicated with. For example, you could swipe the device over a tag on your car, and have it automatically turn on Bluetooth and GPS.

The rest of the specifications place this device in the upper echelon of Android phones. It sports a 1.2 GHz dual-core CPU, a 4.3-inch, 800×400 IPS display, a 5-megapixel camera and 16 GB of memory.

Surprisingly, all of this runs on now ancient Android 2.3 or Gingerbread, but an option to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich is promised for later. LG will launch the device in the Korean market, but the date and price have not been revealed yet.

VLC 2.0 Has Been Released, Download Links Inside

We have followed the latest VLC development ever since Videolan pushed the first build of the media player’s new version to the public ftp server. It did not take long after that initial release before the first release candidate build was made available.
The developers today have released the final version of the media player. Interested users can download it directly from the official website where it is available for Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux operating systems. The 64-bit version of Windows has not been posted yet on the VLC 2.0 download page. Only a 64-bit Mac OS X version has been posted yet. It is not clear if the developers have postponed the released of the 64-bit Windows version, or if they plan to release the first official 64-bit release for the operating system in one of the next releases instead.
The release notes lists all the important changes of VLC 2.0 Twoflower sorted into groups such as video, audio, formats or professional users.
The developers have added experimental Blu-Ray disc support to VLC 2.0. It is experimental because of its limitations. This first version does not support menus yet, and does not ship with AACS and BD+ DRM libraries that are needed to play back copy protected Blu-Ray discs.

Other changes include a rewritten video output core and modules, new video outputs for Windows 7, Android and iOS, and multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4 and WebM. The developers have added support for several professional codecs and formats, including HD and 10bits codecs as well as SDI and HD-SDI card support for input on Linux.
Mac users benefit from extensions support and OS X Lion integration, continued support for OS X 10.5 and Power PC users, and support for all QTKit devices.
VLC 2.0 improves the decoding performance on multi-core processor systems, systems that support gpu hardware decoding and mobile hardware the player runs on. A click on Tools > Preferences > Input & Codecs > Use GPU accelerated decoding reveals whether gpu hardware acceleration is enabled in the media player. It is turned off by default.
Users who do not want VLC to remember which videos they played in the media player can disable the history feature in the Interface Settings under Save recently played items.
Have you worked with VLC 2.0 already? If so, what is your opinion of the new release? Oh, and if you prefer direct links to the downloads, use this link.

Wrong Superhero

Wrong Superhero:

cheddar, beer and mustard pull-apart bread

cheddar, beer and mustard pull-apart bread:

You might have created a monster. I went back and forth, again and again, before sharing the recipe for potato chip cookies. My presumption was that most sane people would find them revolting; that the comment section would be a string of “eww”s. Silly me! It turns out that a whole lot of you are closet potato chip sandwich lovers, and worse. You put Doritos on your pizza! You put Cheetos on your tuna! I am clearly among my brethren. This will only lead to trouble, as the next time I have a weird, funky combination of flavors I want to try out, who will stop me? Clearly, not you.

Like this. For a while, I’ve been enamored with this idea of pull-apart bread, such as Flo Braker’s from her latest book. Yet as lovely as buttery lemon sugar is, or cinnamon sugar for that matter, is, I wanted to give it a savory spin. My first inclination was to go with the universally adored (but kinda overused these days, don’t you think?) cheddar, chives and bacon — i.e. baked potato toppings — but what I’ve really been dreaming about lately is Welsh rarebit, which I understand to be pub food in places I haven’t been lucky enough to travel to yet. It’s a thick, punchy, rich sauce made with cheddar and mustard and beer and butter and cream and spices and it is often ladled over a piece of toast, such as rye or another brown bread. And I want it.

... Read the rest of cheddar, beer and mustard pull-apart bread on smittenkitchen.com

Wake Up Sheeple

Wake Up Sheeple: