Walmart's apparently gearing up to challenge Amazon on its turf and has conjured up a Prime competitor that will begin testing as soon as this summer. According to sources, the company's unlimited two-to-three-day shipping service for online purchases will cost $50, almost half of what Prime costs ($99). Amazon's version comes with add-ons, though, such as free video and music streaming, which Walmart won't be able to offer for now. However, The Information says Walmart is considering adding features to its codename "Tahoe" service. They may include something that involves Vudu, a video streaming service the company owns, as well as same-day grocery delivery, which it already does in five markets. The chain might also partner with other companies for perks meant to entice customers to sign up.
Walmart is leagues behind Amazon when it comes to online shopping, and up until now, it's been incapable of fulfilling two-day shipping for orders made via its website. This project requires serious investment and a willingness in the part of the old-school retailer (as The Information calls it) to change its ways and improve its online presence and infrastructures. The service launching this summer is invite-only, and the company will only decide where to go from there based on the testers' feedback.
Hulu's push to put its content in front of cable TV customers has a new partner: AT&T. The streaming service already teamed up with Cablevision, and also announced it's working with several smaller cable providers to put Hulu on their customer's TiVo DVRs. While we're still not sure how the Cablevision deal will work, the situation with AT&T (which tried to buy Hulu) is clear: this isn't plugging into U-Verse TV boxes, and you will need a $7.99 subscription to make it work. As shown in the picture above, the two already have a partnership to put some of Hulu's free shows on the AT&T site, so this will expand that to include stuff people will need to pay extra for. While the two are "exploring a possibility" of bringing a Hulu app to TV, when they launch later this year AT&T customers will be able to browse the catalog via a mobile app or on the web.
Of course, you can already get Hulu via web, mobile and connected TV apps, so why is it setting up all of these deals? The idea here is about getting its subscription in front of as many potential customers as possible, while adding more content for viewers who are already paying for TV and watching commercials.
With Netflix millions of customers ahead and already owning mindshare with its original content, Hulu needs a different approach to expose what it has, including current-season TV shows, The Criterion Collection, Seinfeld and a growing slate of original series. In the distant past (2011) customers couldn't get Hulu or Netflix on cable-provided DVRs, even for TiVos which already supported the apps. These are different times, and as TV companies see more customers spending time watch TV streamed from the internet, they'll be looking for a way to get a piece of that action.
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Google is suspending Map Maker, the service that allows anyone to contribute to Google Maps, following a prank submission that showed the Android mascot urinating on an Apple logo. When the mapping mischief was first discovered, most of us had a good chuckle and wondered who was responsible. Inevitably, Google took it down and later confirmed that it was a user-created edit, which raised questions about Map Maker's review policies.
The service uses a mixture of "Google Reviewers" and trusted users to moderate Map Maker contributions, but clearly the setup has some flaws. As such, Google has already suspended auto-approval and user moderation, instead relying on manual checks from its in-house team. The company says it's quickly accrued a huge backlog of user-contributed edits, so while it develops a new moderation system, it's suspending public submissions entirely. It'll come into effect from May 12th and while Google says it's "a temporary situation," it's also admitted that it'll take more than a few days to fix.
Accessibility options come in all shapes and sizes and many are unique to the particular device or Android version that you have. There are some stock Android accessibility settings you'll find everywhere, like TalkBack, font size, captions and ''touch and hold'' delay time settings, but there's lots more, some that are really cool like using your LED flash as a notification LED. So take a look through your particular device's settings and see what you can make use of. Here's the five I think are the coolest though.
1. Magnification gestures
You know how we've shown you cool one-handed Google Maps gestures in the past, like for zooming in and out? Well, you can do the same thing system wide with the magnification gestures accessibility option. If you enable the option you can triple tap to zoom in and triple tap to zoom out again. If you triple tap and hold, you can temporarily magnify your screen and pan around, then just release to go back to normal. It's a super useful feature once you start using it.
2. Text-to-Speech
Probably the most well known of all accessibility features, you may have even used this already. All you need to do is have the Google Text-to-Speech engine enabled and then download the language pack you want.
I use Text-to-Speech as a simple way to finally get through all the content I save to Pocket for later reading. Which I never get around to. So I simply hit the menu button in an article I've saved to Pocket and let Google read the article to me while I prepare dinner. That, my friends, is the definition of laziness! But I prefer to call it efficiency.
3. Negative colors/Color adjustment/Invert colors
If you have a Samsung and don't really like the dark background vibe, you can simply go into the accessibility settings and check the box next to Negative Colors. Et voila! You will now have a white themed TouchWiz interface.
The same thing works on the LG G3 too, where it is called Invert Colors, but as you can see in the topmost image, you might get some pretty whacky color combinations. Likewise, both Samsung and LG's accessibility options allow you to adjust screen and content colors for your particular visual needs.
4. TalkBack/Explore by Touch
TalkBack is awesome, especially if your eyesight is as bad as mine or you've lost your glasses. You can even use this if your screen has issues, as long as your touchscreen is still responsive. Once you've enabled the option, whatever you tap, press or activate will be spoken aloud to you. Explore by Touch is the same thing under a different name. The additional settings for TalkBack are enormous and definitely worth checking out further.
5. Interaction control
Interaction control appears on Samsung devices either through the accessibility menu or by pressing Home and the Volume Down buttons. It lets you turn your motion gestures and screen timeout settings on or off, but the coolest part of it is that you can block off specific areas of the screen from responding to touch input, like the status bar or notification shade, for example.
Check your particular device's accessibility settings to see if you have these features listed under a different name. For example, the LG G3 calls Interaction Controls, ''Touch Control Areas,'' so a little bit of exploration is definitely worthwhile. I've added screenshots from a Nexus 5, Galaxy S4 and the LG G3 in this article to give you a quick look at the various options available in Accessibility Settings. Here's the rest of the Galaxy S4's accessibility options for rererence.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THESE ACCESIBILITY OPTIONS? LET ME KNOW IN THE COMMENTS
At its Build developer conference last week, Microsoft made a pair of announcements about Windows development that were more than a little surprising: Windows will support applications developed for iOS and Android. This immediately felt like a dangerous move. Windows will not be the first operating system to run foreign applications. Famously, IBM advertised OS/2 as a "Better Windows than Windows" in the 1990s, boasting that its platform would run all your existing Windows applications with greater stability and performance. More recently, BlackBerry 10 included support for Android applications, with BlackBerry licensing the Amazon App Store and using it as its gateway to a world of Android-compatible software.
Neither OS/2 nor BlackBerry 10 has made a success of this capability. There are two major problems with supporting foreign applications on a niche platform. The first is straightforward: it removes any incentive for developers to bother with the native platform. Investing in developing for a minor platform is already something of a gamble, and by telling developers "Oh hey, you can just use your existing Win16 or Android program..." as IBM and BlackBerry (respectively) did, you're implicitly sending them a message. "Don't bother learning our platform or writing native apps for it." This capability cedes a lot of control. By being dependent on apps developed for a third-party platform, you give the owner of that third-party platform the power to choose how to evolve its APIs and add new features. This bit OS/2 hard: while IBM was busy promoting how well OS/2 could run 16-bit Windows applications, Microsoft was busy encouraging developers to create new 32-bit Windows applications and end-users to buy the 32-bit capable Windows 95. This new world of 32-bit software wouldn't run on OS/2, and so the big OS/2 feature that IBM heavily marketed was rendered semi-useless. OS/2 found some niche success, but it was ultimately a failure .
Advanced SystemCare 8 Free takes a one-click approach to protect, repair, clean, optimize and eventually speed up your PC. With over 150 MILLION downloads worldwide, this fantastic, award-winning, free PC repair software is a "must-have" tool for your computer to make your PC running like a new one. It's easy to use and 100% safe with no adware, spyware, or viruses.
Integrated with up to date uninstall technology, IObit Uninstaller 4 helps you remove unwanted programs and browser plug-ins/toolbars easily even when Windows "Add or Remove Programs" fails. The newly added Win8 Apps Module even helps you uninstall the pre-installed Win8 apps. Not only just remove applications by the programs' build-in uninstall, it also scans and removes all leftovers easily and thoroughly with Powerful Scan. What's more, even uninstallation not performed by IObit Uninstaller can automatically call Powerful Scan to delete leftovers in this version. For system stability, IObit Uninstaller 4 still creates a system restore point before every uninstallation and provides a better management of system restore point.
Outdated drivers may heavily affect your PC performance and lead to system crashes. Driver Booster Free, designed with IObit's most advanced driver update technology, scans and identifies outdated drivers automatically, and downloads and installs the right update for you with just ONE click, saving you loads of time. Moreover, this driver updater is specially designed to tweak drivers for better gaming performance and ensure better PC performance by enhancing updating security with Restore, Uninstall & Rollback features. It's the right driver update tool to protect your PC from hidden security vulnerabilities, hardware failures, conflicts, and system crashes.
Game Assistant 2 is a free, light and easy-to-use system tool to help you monitor and speed up your PC even when you are in game. In order to protect gaming PC, especially laptops from hardware damage caused by high temperature, Game Assistant 2 provides a temperature monitor to show you the temperature of CPU, mainboard, GPU and fan speed in real time. What's more, it also can run without any compatibility problem in your game window. When the temperature is higher than the standard you set, its alarm will inform you to take action to protect your PC. Besides, if you find that your PC is slowed down by the high ram consumption, you can easily clean ram with just one click.
5) Microsoft Security Essentials Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is an antivirus software (AV) product that provides protection against different types of malware such as computer viruses, spyware, rootkits and Trojan horses. It runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, but not on Windows 8, which has a built-in AV component. The license agreement allows home users and small businesses to install and use the product free of charge. It replaces Windows Live OneCare, a discontinued commercial subscription-based AV service, and the free Windows Defender, which until Windows 8 only protected users from adware and spyware. windows.microsoft.com/mse/
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THESE?? Is you have more software recomendations, put it in the comments...
Check your particular device's accessibility settings to see if you have these features listed under a different name. For example, the LG G3 calls Interaction Controls, ''Touch Control Areas,'' so a little bit of exploration is definitely worthwhile. I've added screenshots from a Nexus 5, Galaxy S4 and the LG G3 in this article to give you a quick look at the various options available in Accessibility Settings. Here's the rest of the Galaxy S4's accessibility options for rererence.
