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MacBook Pro Fans Getting Antsy For Haswell Upgrade
How to Natively Boot Linux on Your Mac
7 Days of Complimentary Downloads: 50,000 Graphics and Images
PayPal Beacon Bluetooth Low Energy Device To Reinvent the In-store Shopping Experience
Seagate Helps Eliminate Fear of Data Loss
MacBook Pro Fans Getting Antsy For Haswell Upgrade
CNET's Dan Ackerman notes that while this week iPhones are front and center in the minds of industry watchers, this would've been a perfect time to slip in some modest internal upgrades for most of the Mac line of computers, since the only Mac systems that have been upgraded to Intel's new power-sipping Haswell fourth-generation Core i CPUs are the 13-inch and 11-inch MacBook Airs.
That, Akerman notes, has resulted in the unusual circumstance of Apple's entry-level laptop line being a generation ahead of its premium MacBook Pro line, to say nothing of the desktop Macs, with the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros with Retina Display still powered by Intel's third-generation Core i-series chips.
Likewise, he contends, the 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models, currently the only Apple laptops with built-in optical drives, could also use new CPUs to keep them from feeling quite so dated, although he acknowledges that possibly instead Apple will just put these non-Retina MacBook Pro models out to pasture, and we may never seem them refreshed again.
For the full commentary visit here:
http://goo.gl/FN8E3m
How to Natively Boot Linux on Your Mac
mac.tutsplus.com's Dylan Herx sasays: Linux is not for everyone, but it is, however, a perfectly acceptable (in Herx's opinion good) alternative to Windows and OS X, offering near-limitless control over an operating system and available for free. Moreover, Ubuntu, a popular distro of the open-source OS, works well on a Mac, and best of all, it can be booted natively.
Herx notes that running Ubuntu on your Mac will require a few things: an EFI boot menu called rEFInd, a Linux Live CD or USB, and some spare time. The method outlined below was completed on a 2012 MacBook Air, but it should work on other models as well.
To read more, click here.
http://tinyurl.com/pbklc5q
7 Days of Complimentary Downloads: 50,000 Graphics and Images
To create awareness for GraphicStock.com, they are giving away 7 days of complimentary access to download anything you want from over 50,000 images, icons, vectors, textures, backgrounds and more:
7 Days of Complimentary Downloads: 50,000 Images
Just create a username and password, and you get download access to everything on GraphicStock for 7 days. You can download 20 images per day.
GraphicStock is only giving this complimentary access to a limited number of users, so start downloading now:
Get Your 7 Days of Complimentary Downloads at:
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PayPal Beacon Bluetooth Low Energy Device To Reinvent the In-store Shopping Experience
PayPal has announced PayPal Beacon, a new technology for merchants that will enable consumers to pay at many of their favorite stores completely hands-free. It will reinvent todays in-store shopping experience by making it simpler, faster and richer for consumers, while providing retailers with more ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
PayPal Beacon opens the door to a fundamentally different way to use technology to make shopping more valuable and more personal for consumers and retailers, says David Marcus, president, PayPal. We challenged ourselves to find a better experience than swiping a credit card. We figured the only better way to pay would be to do nothing. Just walk in a store, and, like magic, when youre ready to pay, money is transferred securely. No wallet. No card. Nothing to do. Not even touching your phone.
Faster than swiping a credit card or tapping a mobile phone at the point of sale, PayPal Beacon will make the payment experience get out of the way. It will leverage Bluetooth Low Energy; a breakthrough technology that enables connected devices to communicate with each other seamlessly, while keeping the energy consumption at a very low level. By using BLE, transactions can take place without having to open up an app, without GPS being turned on, and even without a phone signal.
"Consumers will have full control of stores they will want to check in to, those they will want to get prompted to confirm payment for, and stores they will want to enable a complete hands-free experience for. We value our customers privacy, so PayPal Beacon wont constantly track a users location. If a consumer enters a store and declines to check in, or just ignores the prompt entirely, no information is transmitted to PayPal or the merchant," Mr. Marcus explains.
For retailers, PayPal Beacon means they don't have to incentivize consumers to download another app. They can provide more unique, branded shopping experiences to millions of consumers through the PayPal app. Any store running point of sale systems compatible with PayPal, including Booker, Erply, Leaf, Leapset, Micros, NCR, PayPal Here, Revel, ShopKeep, TouchBistro and Vend, and many more soon, will simply plug a PayPal Beacon device in a power outlet in their store. Once the Beacon is plugged in, they will be ready to offer the best, most personal shopping experience ever.
PayPal will be opening up their mobile in-store API soon for 100 developers to imagine ways to make the shopping experience better, from being able to self-checkout on your mobile phone to automatically placing a customers usual order as soon as they walk through the door. Select developers can get a chance to experiment with PayPals API and a developer version of the PayPal Beacon device by submitting their ideas today at:
http://www.paypal.com/beacon.
Availability
Developers can get a chance to get access to PayPal's mobile in-store API to create Beacon-enabled shopping experiences for select retailers this year. PayPal Beacon devices will be generally available for merchants to purchase early next year. At that time, consumers will be able to download or update a new version of the PayPal app to take advantage of Beacon-enabled shopping experiences.
For more information, visit:
https://www.paypal.com
Seagate Helps Eliminate Fear of Data Loss
Seagate Technology plc has announced Seagate Rescue and Seagate Rescue and Replace data protection plans offering coverage starting at $29.99. Seagate is the first storage solutions provider to offer a complete protection plan that covers drive replacement and data recovery services for data that is contained on the drive. The plans offer coverage for nearly any brand of internal or external hard disk drive or solid-state drive. This first-of-its-kind data protection plan covers data recovery services for data that may have been lost due to physical damage, corruption or accidental deletion at a fraction of the cost of data recovery services purchased after the event. The protection plan will be the first to be offered on a global scale following launches in Canada and Europe later this year and throughout the Asia Pacific region in mid-2014.
Seagate is very much aware of the level of trust our customers are putting in us by placing their data on our drives. We always advocate backing up, but there may be times when those photos, videos and data might not have made it to a duplicate copy before something goes wrong, says Scott Horn, vice president of marketing for Seagate. These new data protection plans offer an easy and user-friendly method of helping consumers manage the challenging experience of the potential loss of their most important files, data and memories. We provide peace of mind for those unforeseen events that might damage a drive or its contents.
Today, most everything is stored in an electronic format on a hard drive. From an archived music library, to family photos and video, those moments captured are keepsakes that cannot be captured again if lost. The hard cost of recovering data from a damaged or corrupted drive can reach into the thousands of dollars, where highly skilled technicians must manually disassemble the drive and recover the data bit by bit. Being able to receive data recovery services and also get a replacement drive at an up-front nominal fee provides an option to avoid the high cost of data recovery services.
Data recovery is often a missing element in personal storage devices, says Liz Conner, Sr. Research Analyst for Personal and Entry Level Storage at IDC. Traditionally these devices have focused on providing data back-up or additional capacity to PCs, offering little to no options in the event of a storage failure. Seagates Rescue plan presents end users with peace of mind in the unlikely and unforeseeable event of device damage, drive/file corruption, or accidental file deletion.
The service will first be made available through Seagate.com and will later be able to be purchased from retail and manufacture partners at the time one purchases a computer, external storage or NAS. The Seagate Rescue plans come in 2-year, $29.99; 3-year, $39.99; and 4-year, $49.99 MSRP packages. The plan for Seagate Rescue and Replace, where the data is restored and a new drive is provided, has 2-, 3- and 4-year offerings, for: $39.99, $49.99 and $59.99 MSRP, respectively.
For more information, visit:
http://www.seagate.com
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