New Windows 8 Devices at Samsung London Event: the ATIV Q is Awesome!

Samsung just announced 3 new devices that will join the ATIV family. The ATIV line from Samsung are the Windows based devices and at the reveal in London Samsung showed us two new laptops, A hybrid tablet running both Windows 8 and Android, a Windows 8 tablet and finally an all in one computer.

The ATIV One 5, Samsung's All in One Computer / © samsungmobile.com

Samsung ended up showing us 9 new devices at the London event today, some of which where Galaxy devices which you can read about here. There were a total of 4 Galaxy devices revealed at the event and a total of 5 Ativ devices.

ATIV Q

The first device to be shown to members of the audience was the Samsung Ativ Q. This device is a hybrid one running two operating systems in Windows 8 and Android 4.2.2. One really neat feature about this device is that it allows you to seamlessly switch between the Windows 8 OS and the Android Jelly Bean OS. The Ativ Q also has a screen resolution of 3200 x 1800 which is the highest screen resolution in the world at the moment. The device can be used as a normal tablet, as a laptop with a keyboard, and can be placed in a reading or viewing position. Files can be shared around the two operating systems and the battery life is also impressive at it comes in at about 9 hours.

ATIV Tab 3

Samsung's Ativ tab 3 looks a lot like the Samsung Galaxy tab but this device is of course running Windows 8 and it is the world's thinnest Windows 8 tablet at well. The 10 inch tablet has a resolution of 1366 x 768 and has 64 GB of onboard storage. The storage is also expandable as the device comes with a Micro SD slot. Other features include an HDMI out port, and also a good 2 GB of RAM. This device along with the Ativ Q also includes a stylus which can be used for things like drawings etc.

ATIV Book 9 Plus

This is the flagship Windows 8 laptop from Samsung. This high end device has a wonderful design, comes in at a thickness of 13.6mm and weighs in at just over 1.3 kg's. The device has the same screen resolution as the Ativ Q at 3200 x 1800 and the same size display at 13.3 inches. Other specs include 256 GB SSD, a micro HDMI port and also 2 USB 3.0 ports. Gorilla Glass is the material protecting the screen which also boasts touchscreen functionality.

ATIV Book 9 LITE

This is the cheaper version of the Ativ book 9 range of laptops. It comes in with a lot of the things that the Ativ Book 9 has but at a more affordable price. The screen resolution is no longer the 3200 x 1800 qHD but a more humble 1366 x 768 which is a noticeable drop when you view the two side by side. On the outside though the two look very similar.

ATIV One 5 Style

This device is a desktop PC running Windows 8, with the same look and feel as the Galaxy family of devices. The machine boasts a quad core AMD A6 processor and 4 GB of RAM. As far as storage is concerned it goes all the way up to 1 TB which means you will probably not run out of storage space for all your files. Moving on to connectivity, you have 3 USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, Bluetooth 4.0 and HMDI in and out.
It seems as if Samsung is looking to replicate the success of its Galaxy line with these Windows devices. Tell us what you think of Samsung's latest efforts by leaving a comment below.

Android-powered Garmin Monterra is a powerful, expensive outdoor GPS with Wi-Fi

Garmin announced a new Android device called Monterra. It’s not a smartphone, but a Wi-Fi enabled outdoor GPS unit featuring the company’s powerful location and mapping capabilities.

Inside, it packs GPS + GLONASS alongside other sensors like 3-axis compass with accelero meter and gyro, as well as barometric altimeter to track changes in pressure to pinpoint precise altitude, and monitor weather conditions.

In addition, there’s also a highly durable 4-inch mineral glass transflective display and even an 8-megapixel camera with LED flash for taking photos, along with 6GB of expandable storage (using microSD cards).

Perhaps more importantly, Monterra is fully ruggedized and has an IPX7 waterproof rating, and (the best part) can be powered both by a built-in Li-ion battery or traditional AA batteries. Pretty darn cool when you’re out of power.

When it comes to connectivity options, Garmin’s baby has Wi-Fi, ANT+, Bluetooth 3.0 and NFC capabilities, allowing users to share data, maps, waypoints, tracks, routes and geocaches with other wireless devices. Additionally, Monterra is compatible with BaseCamp, a free software that lets you view and organize maps, waypoints, routes and tracks.

The Garmin Monterra will be available in Q3 2013 at a recommended retail price of £599.99 (about $927) with preloaded Rec Map Europe with Navteq roads. Kinda expensive though I guess “outdoor professionals” won’t mind spending an extra few grands for this kind of device…

There Is No Google Reader Replacement, Only Alternatives

Google Reader is slowing down. Over the past few days, buttons have broken, marking feeds as read seemed to take a bit longer than usual, and the Android mobile website on some devices shifted over to the desktop view with no way to change things back. As users up until the bitter end, we can no longer complain about these events because Google doesn’t care –it’s shutting down Google Reader on July 1 and we all have to leave.

It’s the digital equivalent of bringing up the house lights when the rock concert is over. You don’t have to go home, folks, but you can’t stay here.

No one cares about RSS feeds, except for maybe 50 million of the Internet’s most voracious news readers*. Journalists, bloggers, programmers, technically savvy IT workers, researchers, students, startup founders, and anyone else who has grown accustomed to a simple product that lets you – not algorithms or tweets – be in control of which news sources to track and which stories to read.

In the wake of the impending shutdown, a number of alternatives have sprung up to offer a “replacement” for Google Reader. Though some come close, none have completely nailed the experience yet.

*50 million: Digg’s estimate of those who care about RSS.

The Only Real Contenders So Far: Feedly & Digg

Feedly

Feedly has been building its RSS product for years, which gives it a huge head start in this space. Last week, it announced a reach of 12 million users as it officially launched “Feedly Cloud,” a backend infrastructure to power the ecosystem of RSS reader client applications like Reeder, Press, Nextgen Reader, Newsify, gReader,  and more, left abandoned by Google’s exit from RSS. These apps had only offered a front-end RSS browsing experience, which means they needed someone else’s API to function. Feedly is one of the few to step in and serve that need.

Why Feedly: Google Reader users will love Feedly because it comes closest to mirroring the Google Reader experience, and it offers a number of settings that can be tweaked to your liking. The service’s “Titles Only” view (which can be set globally in Preferences) offers the same sort of compact view, perfect for headline-scanning action, that Google Reader once provided. It also supports a number of Google Reader’s features, including support for many of the same keyboard shortcuts, tagging, favorites (“Saved for Later”), and “Mark as Read” functionality to quickly plow through categories.

What’s wrong: Feedly currently pulled out its “search” functionality, which lets you pull up content by keyword or topic — something that’s one of the top user requests today. That’s still in the works, the company says, but it’s a big undertaking to deliver upon. In addition, though the company offers clients for web and mobile, the mobile apps are still somewhat over-designed with big, colorful category headers instead of the basic list of folders like Google Reader.

That being said, it’s hard to find a lot of fault with Feedly, and the company is quickly working to add the few missing pieces. There will be little things here and there that you’ll need to get used to, of course (like the “t” shortcut no longer lets you tag items, but rather tweets them). However, in some cases, they’re changes for the better (like the option to set the default view by category).

Digg Reader

Betaworks’ quickly built take on Google Reader is the new kid on the block, and has a lot of potential to be a viable Feedly competitor. Though initially, the team has been working to launch something that offers the core RSS reading experience, the plan is to bring the RSS reader into the modern age by alerting users to what’s most popular among their network and better connect users with Digg.com. In Digg Reader’s “popular” section, the service scans your feeds and then ranks them with one, two or three dots to help you discover trending articles. In practice these recommendations were hit or miss at times, but the beta build we’ve been testing is unfinished.

Why Digg Reader: Like Feedly, the app lets you organize content into folders, view unread counts, move around with Google Reader shortcuts, save posts for later, and share to social networks. With the above-described “Popular” section, it also offers something similar to Feedly’s “Today” for an at-a-glance list of what’s trending. Ex-Google Reader users will also appreciate Digg Reader’s minimalistic look-and-feel, which is almost entirely black, white and shades of gray (outside of the RSS content itself).

What’s Wrong: Most of what’s wrong with Digg Reader is a function of time: The team had a limited number of weeks to build this service, having only started after Google’s shutdown announcement went live. That being said, there are still a number of features that ex-Google reader users likely relied on that aren’t ready in the new reader’s product at launch (planned for this Tuesday). Search is also missing here, for example, as is the ability to tag content or share to other social services beyond Facebook, Twitter or Digg. (“Read later” services like Pocket, Readability and Instapaper are supported, however.)

Digg Reader offers just two views, “list” and “expanded.” While the former is meant to give users a headline-scanning option, Feedly’s “Title Only” view is even more compact, which means its more like Google Reader’s “compact” view.

At launch, Digg Reader will have an iOS app, but the Android version will not be ready for another few weeks.

The Startups

Offering a full Google Reader replacement is no simple task, so it’s notable that some startups have tried to take on this job without the resources of a larger company like Facebook or Betaworks behind them. That being said, for power users of Google Reader, none of these smaller companies will be able to replace what is about to be lost.

NewsBlur (unlimited feeds, $24/year): This cross-platform news reader offers Reader import, compact views, saving stories, and even an interesting “training” feature that’s meant to help teach the reader what sorts of stories you like best. But NewsBlur’s interface is too busy and cluttered, it lacks search, and can be slow when you have a lot of feeds to load.

Feedbin ($2/month): Feedbin’s paid web app is another good alternative for tracking feeds, viewing unread counts, subscribing and tags, and it uses Reader-like navigation via keyboard shortcuts. However, while it supports Reader data import, it lacks a number of key features like search or Feedly’s wide variety of layouts. But most importantly, it’s not a fully cross-platform product on its own. If you use Feedbin on the web, then to keep data in sync across mobile, you’ll need to use an app powered by its API like Reeder, Press, Favs, Tafiti, or others, or beta test the newer Feedbin Reader for Android.

The Old Reader and Hive (previously HiveMined): These two startups sounded promising in theory as both are focusing on simply rebuilding the original Reader – the former working to bring the social aspects back, as well. Unfortunately, neither of these have made it yet, and won’t be solid replacements by the time Google Reader shuts down.

Both apps have issues with speed at times (The Old Reader is far better on this front than Hive, though). Though The Old Reader does have search, it’s title-only, not full keyword search. Hive meanwhile has no search, and struggled to import Reader subscriptions. Sometimes Hive’s buttons are so slow to register clicks that you’re unsure if the app has gone down. Sharing to outside services is either limited or non-existent. Neither service offers a mobile app.

Reeder (paid): Until recently, Reeder was not a Google Reader replacement, it was only the front-end interface for viewing feeds hosted by Google. Since the Reader shutdown announcement, the company said it’s now making plans to continue development, but this involves major changes on its part. Today, Reeder uses Feedbin and Feedly’s APIs on mobile, and is also working to support standalone RSS (introduced in the iPhone app, but not yet the iPad or Mac apps). Because Reeder was built on top of others’ infrastructure, it’s not ready to replace Google Reader at this time. That said, it is one to watch given it has an engaged Apple user base and some traction.

NetNewsWire: Released just today, a beta build of NetNewsWire (ver. 4, beta) became available, and it sports a number of Google Reader-like features, including keyboard shortcuts, limited sharing options, favoriting, mark as read functionality, and more. However, it defaults to an inbox-like view, and its mobile client apps are only for iOS, and not yet updated to the new iOS 7 style.

The Rest: Me-Too’s, Flipboard Alternatives And Aol’s Disastrous Attempt

Ever since the Google Reader shutdown announcement, our inboxes have been filled with pitches for “replacements” nearly every day. It would almost be a disservice to TechCrunch readers to list these here, because real replacements are huge investments in infrastructure and APIs and show an attempt to honor the needs of Google Reader refugees with features like compact views, keyboard navigation, tagging and search. Simply offering an RSS-based product DOES NOT make a service an alternative to Google Reader, and attempting to position it like that is band-wagon jumping at best and dishonest at worst.

Many of these pitches look cobbled together overnight as weekend projects. None are any good. (And yes, I got your email.)

Also, several of these “me too” products tend to look more like watered-down versions of Flipboard,not Google Reader. Really, if you just want a news magazine, use Flipboard then, or wait to see whatFacebook has in store with its forthcoming “newspaper for mobile” product.

Aol Reader 

Even Aol (disclosure: TechCrunch parent) bungled its RSS reader debut, and launched a product that the lot of us here at TechCrunch can’t even get to work properly. Aol’s RSS reader claims to offer Google Reader import, but refuses to upload Google Reader’s XML file in a multitude of browsers, according to several of us here who gamely tested the service anyway.

Aol’s Reader had intermittent issues in Chrome especially this morning, refusing to ever add the TechCrunch feed, for example (thanks Aol), and taking a good 30 seconds or so to do the same in Safari. This slowness may have been a launch bug, but it wasn’t promising. The reader is also missing search, but does offer tagging, limited sharing, favoriting, four different viewing options (which are suspiciously identical to Feedly though), and oh, giant Aol On Originals video ads in the sidebar…

Well, at least they have a monetization plan.

There Is No Google Reader Replacement

In each of the products listed above, and the dozens of those we haven’t linked to which are still promoting themselves as a home to Reader refugees, there are huge gaps in functionality – like Search, for example, which no one has fully fleshed out just yet. Because of this, users will also lose their ability to search and uncover content from older websites which have long since shutdown, taking their RSS archive with them. Google Reader let you time travel into the web’s past, a personalWay Back Machine of sorts. Unless you’ve diligently been tagging or starring this older content over the years, it will essentially disappear into the ether without a search feature like Google’s, which once dug into seemingly infinite RSS archives.

Reader was also more than a web service. It was a mobile website, a mobile app and an API that allowed an ecosystem of RSS clients to flourish.

It was a quantified-self tracker, whose “Trends” section told you about your news reading habits, including which sites you read, clicked, shared and emailed the most and when, and one that kept track of the feeds that stayed fresh or had become inactive.

It was also a discovery service that connected you with friends, let you package bundles of subscriptions and share them, search for content by keyword, and browse through posts that others found interesting. And it was an alerting tool that could track whenever a person, topic or keyword was mentioned on Google News, Blog Search, Twitter or eBay.

For anyone looking for a Google Reader replacement, the saddest news of all is that there really isn’t one yet.

There are only alternatives.

The Ascend P6 is Huawei's latest attempt at a flagship Android smartphone

Huawei is in London today launching its new smartphone, the Ascend P6. The first thing you'll notice about the P6 is it's incredibly thin — Hauwei says it's 6.18mm thick, which is far thinner than Apple's iPhone 5 or the Samsung Galaxy S4. Huawei also claims it's the "world's thinnest" smartphone, but as is often the case with such titles, that achievement is set to be eclipsed by another Chinese competitor soon. The Ascend P6 is pretty light: at 120g, it weighs 10g less than the Galaxy S4. Despite its small shell, Huawei has managed to squeeze in what are essentially the internals of the LG Nexus 4. There's a 4.7-inch 1280 x 720 LCD with in-cell touch, an unspecified 1.5GHz quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, a 2000mAh battery, and 8GB of internal storage (expandable via a microSD card slot).

Compared to Huawei products we've seen in the past, the Ascend P6 is definitely a step up in quality. Available in black, white, or pink, it's constructed mostly from plastic and doesn't feel cheap, but it's not exactly premium either. The sides are made from aluminum and have an antenna notch that'll be familiar to anyone that's seen an iPhone in the past three years. One odd facet of the design is the corners, which are rounded much like most smartphones at the top, but at the bottom curve round to meet the back of the phone. It's an strange design decision — the two styles don't work particularly well together in my opinion. Another niggling aspect of the design are the device's power and volume controls: they're a little too shallow, and there's no comforting "click" when you press them. Apart from that, everything seems well put together, and the display is good enough — it looks almost identical to the Nexus 4's screen.

THE CAMERA SOFTWARE HAS A 'BEAUTY LEVEL' SLIDER TO MAKE YOU MORE ATTRACTIVE

Huawei is making noise about the P6's photographic abilities. The rear-facing camera has a backside-illuminated 8-megapixel sensor and an f/2.0 lens. Huawei says the camera can shoot close up photos from as little as 4cm (about 1.5 inches) away. Its front-facing camera is also pretty special, on paper at least: it's a 5-megapixel unit, far higher than most smartphones. Huawei has equipped the front-facing camera with "Auto Face Enhancement," which comes with a "beauty level" slider that can apparently make you more attractive in your self portraits. When I tried it out, all it seemed to do was blur my face slightly and make my cheeks a little more red.

We took a few quick shots with the P6 and found the camera to be fairly capable. It definitely can't compete with Nokia's Lumia 920, and falls short of the iPhone 5 and HTC One, but from my brief time with it I could see myself using it regularly without too much issue. The same can't be said for Huawei's Android skin, unfortunately. Called the "Emotion UI," it's based on the latest version of Android, 4.2.2, but it's a pretty heavy skin that feels like an attempt to ape Samsung's love-it-or-hate-it interpretation of Google's OS.

There are a few good ideas in the skin, though, not least of which are granular controls over notifications and data access. Much like iOS' centralized settings for Notification Center, you can stop any app from creating notifications, and you can also prevent apps from using your mobile data. Another thing the skin has over HTC's and Samsung's efforts is the inclusion of on-screen buttons, so at least there won't be any irritating on-screen menu prompts within apps.

Huawei believes that its smartphone's quality, combined with a comparatively low price tag, will be enough to overcome its competitors' marketing budgets. The Ascend P6 isn't likely to ever make it to the US anytime soon as it doesn't have LTE connectivity built in — Huawei says an LTE version will come this fall. It's planning to launch the phone in the UK, mainland Europe, and Australia shortly, expanding to 100 countries by the end of the year. It'll be priced at €449 ($600) without a contract, which is quite a bit cheaper than most "flagship" products.

Lemon’s Mobile Wallet Gets More Useful With New Expense Reporting Service; Support For Transactions Is Next

Although you can’t ditch your leather-bound billfold yet, a startup called Lemon has been slowly building up a mobile wallet platform that’s encroaching on the traditional wallet’s territory, and even making it better in some cases. Today, it’s extending its feature set again with the addition of an expense reporting tool, which serves to augment its previously available receipt capture function.

Operating as a digital copy of your physical wallet, Lemon already helps you track credit card balances, access your saved cards on the go, cancel credit cards when your real wallet is lost or stolen, and save receipts by snapping a photo of them. But users have been demanding more, explains founder and CEO Wences Casares.

“The most active users of receipts were using them for their expense reports. And those users kept asking for more functionality,” he says. “They were doing a lot of inconvenient things to use it for receipts.”

Given that there are plenty of receipt trackers out there on the market today from services like QuickBooks, Expensify, Concur, and others, it’s somewhat surprising to find that users were turning to a consumer-facing tool to get the job done, especially when it required more manual effort.

Casares says that’s because, in many cases, expense tracking solutions (like Concur, e.g.) are sold to the enterprise, and then the company tells its employees this is what we have that you can use. But when users had more choice, they were opting for a simpler option: just snap a photo and be done with it, then deal with the headache of expense reporting later on.

Now Lemon can help with that latter part. Its new expense reporting application can accommodate photos of receipts and e-receipts which are forwarded to expenses@lemon.com for processing. When complete, receipts are saved in a PDF format for the user, and attached directly the expense report itself, which can also be output in CSV or XLS format for importing into other expense software.

Though Lemon has been designed for consumers, expense reporting pushes the product more towards business users, though not enterprise. With its centralized management dashboard, admins can group expense reports by individual, category or user-created tags, then approve and/or route approvals to others who process the reimbursements. The solution works well for smaller businesses or even individuals, who just need to track their expenses in a more organized manner.

The system is offered as a free trial within Lemon’s mobile app, updated today, and then the cost is $5/month per user going forward.

Casares says the company is now working to support deeper Quick Books integration, and will soon offer a refreshed mobile wallet user interface which allows users to group their cards into compartments – the way a “real” wallet works. Though he declined to provide download figures or user numbers, he says that Lemon is now capturing 1,000 new cards per hour.

Following the refresh, the next big move for Lemon will be to begin enabling transactions, using the data users’ have saved within their wallets already. Cesares says they’re considering many different avenues for this, but the plan is to start with e-commerce, not at point-of-sale. Guess you’ll have to hang on to your billfold for a bit longer, then.

Ex-Contractor Is Charged in Leaks on N.S.A. Surveillance

Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor whose leak of agency documents has set off a national debate over the proper limits of government surveillance, has been charged with violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property for disclosing classified information to The Guardian and The Washington Post, the Justice Department said on Friday.

Each of the three charges unsealed on Friday carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years, for a total of 30 years. But Mr. Snowden is likely to be indicted, and additional counts may well be added. In addition to the theft charge, the two charges under the Espionage Act include “unauthorized communication of national defense information” and “willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.” Communications intelligence is the technical term for eavesdropping and other electronic intercepts.

The charges were filed on June 14 by federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, which handles many national security cases. American officials said they have asked the authorities in Hong Kong, where Mr. Snowden is believed to be in hiding, to detain him while an indictment and an extradition request are prepared. The attempt to extradite him is likely to produce a long legal battle whose outcome is uncertain. The extradition treaty between the United States and Hong Kong includes an exception for political offenses, and Mr. Snowden could argue that his prosecution is political in nature.

Hong Kong has limited autonomy, but matters involving national security and foreign policy are controlled by the Chinese government in Beijing. Regina Ip, a former Hong Kong secretary of security and a current legislator, said Saturday that Hong Kong authorities had “no choice but to comply” with an arrest warrant and that “our police will go and find Mr. Snowden.”

However, Ms. Ip said, Mr. Snowden could delay any extradition by claiming his is “a political offense,” or he could apply for asylum, “and those cases can take 10 years.”

Last week, hundreds of people turned out in the rain for a protest outside the United States Consulate in Hong Kong demanding that officials not cooperate with any American extradition request. The Global Times, a mainland newspaper controlled by the Communist Party, called an extradition of Mr. Snowden an “inconceivable option” in a recent commentary.

The charges against Mr. Snowden, first reported by The Washington Post, are the seventh case under President Obama in which a government official has been criminally charged with leaking classified information to the news media. Under all previous presidents, just three such cases have been brought.

Mr. Snowden, who turned 30 on Friday, fled to Hong Kong last month, carrying four laptops, after leaving his job at the N.S.A.’s eavesdropping station in Hawaii. He has given hundreds of highly classified documents to The Guardian, the British newspaper, which has been publishing a series of revelatory articles about American and British eavesdropping, and a smaller number to The Post.

Mr. Snowden’s disclosures have opened an unprecedented window on the details of surveillance by the N.S.A., including its compilation of logs of virtually all telephone calls in the United States and its collection of e-mails of foreigners from the major American Internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple and Skype.

Mr. Snowden, who has said he was shocked by what he believed to be the N.S.A.’s invasion of Americans’ and foreigners’ privacy, told The Guardian that he leaked the documents because he believed the limits of surveillance should be decided not by government officials in secret but by American citizens.

American intelligence officials have said his disclosures have done serious damage to national security by giving terrorists and others information on how to evade the intelligence net.

Mr. Snowden’s supporters, including some associated with the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks, have approached officials in Iceland on his behalf to inquire about whether he might be granted asylum there. Iceland’s Ministry of the Interior, however, said in a statement that he must be in the country to file an asylum application.

An Icelandic businessman with ties to WikiLeaks, Olafur Vignir Sigurvinsson, has told reporters that he has private aircraft on standby, prepared to fly Mr. Snowden to Iceland. But the American charges and detention request may short-circuit any attempt to reach Iceland.

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian columnist who received most of Mr. Snowden’s leaked documents, blasted the Obama administration over the Espionage Act charges on his Twitter feed. “How is leaking to a newspaper and informing one’s fellow citizens about secret govt behavior ‘espionage’???” Mr. Greenwald wrote.

CloudUp Is A Fast, Dead-Simple Way To Share And View Files On Any Platform (Without The Folders)

In today’s world of email, social networks, SMS, chat applications and cloud services, there are plenty of ways to share share a file, folder, photo or video. And as intelligent devices and cloud computing infrastructure proliferate, and processing power and capacity improve, we expect file transfer and sharing to be speedy — and simple. Everything is about “realtime” and accessibility these days (not that we’re complaining, but thanks Twitter).

Yet, file-sharing still isn’t quite there. Even with all the options — whether it be the Skypes, Facebooks, Google Drives, WeTransfers and You Send Its of the world or the Dropboxex, etc. — we’ve still got one eye out for a better way. (Here’s xkcd putting a fine point on it.) The file sharing service to end all file sharing services.

Dropbox has gotten the closest, gobbling up a ton of mindshare as a result, but its layout and presentation are more storage service than simple sharing tool. In other words, you may store your photos there, but it’s probably not where you’ll go if you want to show them off. This week,CloudUp became the latest to join a younger group of services that are pushing the conversation forward when it comes to speed and simplicity — and nibbling at the heels of the incumbents.

Sharing the mantle (most closely) with services like DropLr, CloudApp, Ge.tt and perhaps biz collaboration and sharing services like Dropmark, CloudUp aims to a new spin on file-sharing by creating a tool to make sharing images, links, documents and videos as simple as humanly possible for both the sharer and the viewer.

In practice, that means that CloudUp has a clean, minimalistic look that makes it feel like it’s made for designers, yet is easy enough to use that your mom could get excited about it. CloudUp enables users to share files by dragging them and dropping them into their browser, automatically generating a link which they can then share on email, Twitter, Facebook and so on.

Like Dropbox, the link-centric service is available for free on the Web or as a native OSX app, the latter of which puts CloudUp in your menu bar for easier drag-and-drop sharing. However, CloudUp wants the similarities to end there. Although the service is offering up to 1,000 uploads for free — that’s the equivalent of about 200GB of storage — CloudUp doesn’t want to just be a storage locker or a quick way to share URLs with your homedawgs.

What’s cool about CloudUp (and distinguishes it from most apps out there) is that it focuses on converting the design of file transfer from one that makes it clear that “THIS PRODUCT IS JUST A UTILITY” to one that’s elegant and minimalist, Jony Ive-style. But the minimalism isn’t there for the sake of itself (sorry hipsters), it’s meant to bring more of the focus to consumption — to make the content the focus, not the app itself.

For more than one file, many services use folders, which look and act like the same folder icons you’ve been seeing on desktops since the Apple IIGS. Instead, when you drag-and-drop multiple files into CloudUp in succession, it automatically collects them in a “Stream.” It functions similarly to folders one would find anywhere else, with a more Pinterest-style layout. Nothing is opaque, the app puts it all right there, making things easier to find. (Personally, I can never find files in Dropbox, but that could be because I was dropped on my head as a child.)

CloudUp also does a lot of cool stuff around conversion. The app creates thumbnails for “nearly every kind of file you can imagine, camera RAWS, office documents, code snippets, images, videos and many others,” Cloudup Engineer TJ Holowaychuk wrote on Medium last week. It’s kind of a small thing, so if you don’t share docs or images that much, it probably won’t matter to you, but if you do, this small stuff matters.

So, beyond just thumbnail rendering, CloudUp has applied some nifty conversion and rendering voodoo on the back-end so that everyone can see them, even if they’re still running IE6, like video transcoding, office doc PDF conversion and image compression so that images appear actually appear on your device.

User streams are also updated in realtime, synchronously, so that even if an image you’re downloading from a friend hasn’t fully transferred yet, you’ll still see it — on mobile, too. And not only that, but you can share a link to a Stream even if it hasn’t finished downloading. Of course, how instantaneous and “realtime” all this is tends to depend on the speed of your browser, but when it works, it’s another big point of differentiation — even if it’s not the one reason you’d download CloudUp.

The team also designed the app not just to be useful when sharing among friends and family, but to facilitate collaboration and productivity among teams as well, CEO Thianh Lu tell us. That, in particular, is something Lu and the rest of the team had been wrestling with for a long time — in other words, this ain’t their first trip around the block. All the EdTech homies in the house know them as the same team behind LearnBoost, a suite of free classroom administration apps for teachers.

While LearnBoost raised $2.87 million from Charles River Ventures, Atlas Ventures and others for its beautifully designed product and its mission to rethink the gradebook, Lu says that teachers were more interested in its Lesson Plan-sharing feature than grading. Teachers were still looking for new ways to share their content, and the more the team fought against the slow sales cycles in K-12 education, they kept coming back to the fragmented sharing problem.

Each member of their team had their own workflow, setup and preferred method of communication and sharing. There wasn’t a single solution out there that let them share and consume files quickly and easily that didn’t offend the eyeballs, so they built CloudUp.

And that’s the same reason that CloudUp’s OSX app attempts to remove the extra steps from the team collaboration process by letting users share files by dropping them on the CloudUp status icon in the menu bar, which automatically copies the Stream’s link to your clipboard so you don’t have to take any other steps. The app also supports automatic uploading of screenshots, which you may or may not think is awesome depending on how frequently you do the ole “shift+command+4″ dance.

All in all, CloudUp has a lot going for it and, at launch, it’s already competitive in a crowded space, which is saying a lot. That being said, it still has a long way to go. CloudUp doesn’t yet do simultaneous photo uploading, it doesn’t have native apps, premium tiers or actual team/business collaboration features — it’s more of an idea than a reality. However, all these are on the near-term roadmap, Lu says, and should becoming to CloudUp experiences near you in the months ahead.

Going forward, the company thinks that its take on file sharing can act as a complement to the Big Storage Kahunas in the space. That’s a smart and completely understandable position to take, but not sure anyone is really buying that. CloudUp is an alternative. Some might think of it as a sexier, frictionless-sharing-focused Dropbox skin and some may get enough use out of their familiar apps that needing an alternative file service sounds superfluous.

But it doesn’t take long to see that CloudUp has nailed the design and user experience. There’s no doubt that this looks better the majority of apps out there. It’s easy to use, and the stream function, instant viewing and link-sharing and the work its doing on the back-end (and front, for that matter) to make conversion and rendering easy pretty much blow Dropbox out of the water.

CloudUp isn’t for the enterprise, and it’s not a place you’re going solely for file storage — in that sense, the “complementary” analogy does make sense. Yes, CloudUp will add premium tiers, but it remains to be seen whether the more casual, file-sharing crowd it’s going after is going to be regularly uploading more than 1,000 files. That means, like LearnBoost, monetizing may be a long, bumpy road for CloudUp, at the same time, as Dropbox moves to scoop up other awesome, sexy mobile apps like Mailbox and photo tools like Snapjoy, a service like CloudUp could become very attractive.

But, in the end, you’ll just have to check it out for yourself to decide.

Mercenary Kings' is 'Borderlands' meets 'Scott Pilgrim' on PS4 and PC

There are plenty of big shooters coming to the PlayStation 4, from Destiny to Killzone: Shadow Fall. These games emphasize massive, open worlds, social connectivity, and incredibly detailed high-definition graphics. Mercenary Kings, an upcoming PS4 and Steam title from Tribute Games, goes a different route. It's a title that feels like the Metal Slug game that time forgot — a 2D shooter for a next-gen console. 

Mercenary Kings is a run-and-gun shooter in the vein of Contra and Metal Slug. You play as a soldier of some sort, and you take on missions that mainly involving killing lots of dudes with really big guns. The gameplay is reminiscent of the classics, with simple platforming and an emphasis on action. But it also feels relatively open, letting you explore levels instead of simply moving from left to right. In the demo I played, the controls felt tight and the weapons satisfyingly powerful.

While it may sound like yet another retro-style indie game, Mercenary Kings has several tweaks that give it a modern feel. Chief among them is the insane amount of weapon upgrades at your disposal — much like in the Borderlands series, you can customize your guns by swapping parts, giving you plenty of freedom to build a firearm that works just right for you. You'll gather these bits and pieces with a Diablo-esque loot system that should provide added incentive for shooting bad guys in the face. According to the developers, there are more than 300 parts to collect and use. And though I played in single player, there will also be co-op play for up to four people, which should make a crazy game even crazier.

The over-the-top weapons and action are complimented by the big, exaggerated pixel art, which comes courtesy of artist and animator Paul Robertson, best known for his work on the Scott Pilgrim beat 'em up for PS3. Characters are cartoonish and exaggerated, and the bad guys explode in surprisingly playful splashes of blood and gore. The bosses are gigantic and the explosions even bigger. The classic gameplay and retro visuals may make Mercenary Kings seem like a dated throwback, but the customization elements and terrific art style help make the game feel modern. It's also the most fun I had playing a PS4 shooter at E3 — and it's coming to both Sony's console and Windows later this year.

Samsung's Ativ Q is a Windows laptop and an Android tablet in one insanely high-res package

Samsung's famous for launching every type of device under the sun, but this time it's crammed them all into a single package. The company's just announced the Ativ Q, a dual-booting device that runs both Windows 8 and Android 4.2.2 inside a 13.3-inch convertible laptop package. The most impressive parts of the hardware are the insanely high-res 3200 x 1800 screen — the first use of the new display Samsung announced in May — and the flexible hinge that allows the Q to work in tablet mode, laptop mode, stand mode, and a sort of floating mode. From a hardware standpoint, it's remarkably similar to the Acer Aspire R7, though at .55 inches and 2.84 pounds it's a much more manageable device.

The Q is powered by an Intel Core i5 Haswell processor. Samsung says it'll get up to 9 hours of battery life, which would be quite the achievement for such a high-res device. But the real selling point is the dual-booting, and particularly the Side Sync software that lets you share data between the two operating systems, and even pin Android apps to your Start screen. It also lets you use your computer to back up your Samsung Android phone, and even use your PC keyboard to type on your phone. To hear Samsung tell it, the Ativ Q is basically a Windows computer with the Play Store — that's a pretty impressive proposition. And, of course, there's an S Pen.

Samsung also announced the Ativ Tab 3, a super-thin 10.1-inch tablet running Windows 8. It's all part of the Ativ family, which Samsung's made a big deal about — bringing laptops, tablets, and crazy convertibles all under the same roof. It looks a lot like the Galaxy Tab 3, a fact Samsung acknowledged during its press conference, but it's very much a full Windows device — "not the RT version," our emcee said with considerable disdain for Microsoft's low-powered OS. It's remarkably small for a full Windows device — it's 8.2mm thick, and weighs only 1.2 pounds. The Tab 3 comes with Office built in, and there's an S Pen here as well. Unfortunately it only has a 1366 x 768 screen, but Samsung promises up to eight hours of battery life.

As these are global launches, there's no word on when the new Ativs will come to the US or how much they'll cost. Samsung's tablet strategy has always been to be different, or at least be extreme. By launching the thinnest Windows 8 tablet, and a type of Windows tablet we've never seen before, the new Ativ models certainly fit the bill. And is it possible that Samsung just used Google to solve Windows' app problem?

HPV Vaccine Is Credited in Fall of Teenagers’ Infection Rate

Enlarge This Image The prevalence of dangerous strains of the human papillomavirus — the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States and a principal cause of cervical cancer — has dropped by half among teenage girls in recent years, a striking measure of success for a vaccine against the virus that was introduced only in 2006, federal health officials said on Wednesday.

The sharp decline in the infection rate comes at a time of deepening worry among doctors and public health officials about the limited use of the HPV vaccine in the United States. Health departments across the country are scrambling for ways to increase vaccination rates, while nonprofit groups are using postcard reminders and social media campaigns and pediatricians are being encouraged to convince families of the vaccine’s benefits.

There are some signs that resistance to the vaccine may be growing. A study published in the journal Pediatrics in March found that 44 percent of parents in 2010 said they did not intend to vaccinate their daughters, up from 40 percent in 2008. Because it prevents a sexually transmitted infection, the vaccine comes with a stigma. Some parents worry it promotes promiscuity. And it has been controversial. During the Republican primary in 2011, Representative Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, said the vaccine could have “dangerous side effects,” a concern that health officials say is unfounded.

The magnitude of the decline in HPV infections surprised public health experts because only about a third of teenage girls in the United States have been vaccinated with the full course of three doses. By comparison, vaccination rates in countries like Denmark and Britain are above 80 percent. Even Rwanda, in East Africa, has reached 80 percent.

Yet even with relatively low vaccination rates in the United States, infection with the viral strains that cause cancer dropped to 3.6 percent among girls ages 14 to 19 in 2010, from 7.2 percent in 2006, the officials said.

“These are striking results,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “They should be a wake-up call that we need to increase vaccination rates. The bottom line is this: It is possible to protect the next generation from cancer, and we need to do it.”

The findings, published online Wednesday in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, covered the years 2003 to 2010 and were based on a national survey that is conducted every two years and is considered the gold standard on health indicators. Government health workers interviewed more than 8,000 girls and women ages 14 to 59 and collected vaginal swabs that were evaluated by the C.D.C.

The infection rate for girls fell even further when the two strains of the virus that cause genital warts were included, with a 56 percent drop over the period of the study. The rate was flat in the years before the vaccine was introduced, giving researchers even more assurance that the vaccine was driving the decline. Health officials began monitoring HPV prevalence in boys only this year. The first data will be available in 2015.

There are about 12,000 cases of cervical cancer and 4,000 deaths a year in the United States. At current vaccination rates, the vaccine would prevent 45,000 cases of cervical cancer and 14,000 deaths among girls now age 13 and younger over the course of their lifetimes, according to C.D.C. estimates. Increasing the rate to 80 percent could prevent an additional 53,000 cancers and nearly 17,000 deaths.

Federal officials on Wednesday sought to dispel fears about the vaccine, and emphasized its role in preventing cervical cancer.

“This is an anticancer vaccine,” Dr. Frieden said.

About 79 million Americans, most in their late teens and early 20s, are infected with HPV, or about a quarter of the American population. Each year, about 14 million people become infected. The virus causes about 19,000 cancers in women every year, and 8,000 in men, according to the C.D.C. Cervical cancer is the most common among women; among men, throat cancer is most common.

Health officials offered several possible explanations for why the drop was so sharp even though most girls in the United States are still not fully vaccinated.

One possible reason is a phenomenon known as herd immunity, in which people who are vaccinated reduce the overall prevalence of the virus in society, decreasing the chances that unvaccinated people would be exposed to someone who is infected. Another is the unexpected effectiveness of a partial dosage of the HPV vaccine, said Dr. Lauri E. Markowitz, a medical epidemiologist at the C.D.C. and the lead author of the study. About half of teenage girls in the United States have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

BlackBerry CEO says iPhone UI is old, lacking innovation

Speaking to The Australian Financial Review, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins was very outspoken about BlackBerry 10 and its place in the smartphone market.

Heins touted BlackBerry’s new OS, mentioning that the company has seen a fair amount of early adopters who have switched from another platform to BlackBerry 10 OS. BlackBerry may not be winning by a long shot, but it enticign customers to leave iOS and Android. Heins notes that the release of several high-profile devices has loosened Apple’s grip on the smartphone market and Apple has been slow to overhaul iOS.

“Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market … They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that,” Mr Heins said.

“History repeats itself again I guess … the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don’t innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old.”

This statement will no doubt cause a stir, especially since BlackBerry is on the death watch listof many analysts. So what do you think? Is iOS old and musty?

The HTC One Mini Is The Perfect Robin To The One’s Batman

The days of a standard phone size are gone. 3.5-inch? 4.3-inch? 5-inch? Phone makers are less concerned with which size is right, and clearly becoming more concerned with offering as many sizes as possible.

Case in point: Engadget has surfaced a leaked photo of what appears to be a smaller version of the HTC One, or the One Mini. Obviously, the photo itself isn’t confirmed, nor is the phone, but the picture seems to match up to some earlier leaks, so at least leak volume seems to be lending credibility.

According to Engadget’s source, the HTC One Mini has a 4.3-inch 720p display, a metallic unibody design, Android 4.2.2 complete with Sense and BlinkFeed, and all powered by a Snapdragon 400 dual-core chip. None of this is confirmed, but we do call into question the metallic unibody design, as the picture appears to show a plastic bezel on the phone.

You’ll also notice that there is Beats branding on the phone, as well as the same front-facing speakers that HTC is pushing as a key feature of the One series.

Thrilling.

Perhaps more interesting than the phone itself, though, is the constantly evolving nature of smartphone size trends. Remember when Zoolander came out? Derek answered a phone that was the size of a mini army action figure, and finally heard the voice of God.

Before Apple ushered in the era of all-touch devices, small was the new new thing in cell phones. Clearly, that changed. Android manufacturers pushed against Apple in size, knowing that Jobs was reluctant to deviate past the 3.5-inch iPhone screen.

Galaxy devices had larger screens, Droids had larger screens, and HTC jumped on board, too. Until one day, Apple announced that the iPhone 5 would have a 4-inch display, the first time that the size of the iPhone display had ever changed. It was almost unsettling.

Zoom to today.

Android manufacturers are pulling back into 4- to 4.3-inch territory with phones like the Motorola Razr M, the Galaxy S4 Mini, and now the HTC One Mini. Meanwhile, rumors are swirling that Apple is experimenting with even larger screen sizes, according to a recent report by Reuters.

In other words, they’re covering all the bases they can. Perhaps I’m annoyed that my 4-inch iPhone 5 doesn’t fit as snuggly in the pocket of my jeans, whereas a friend of mine could be downright obsessed with the video viewing and gaming experience on his giant Galaxy Note 2.

People are different, and so must their phones be. But it also seems clear that phone makers, while spreading a variety of sizes out in front of consumers, are still looking for the sweet spot.

So where will we land? Your guess is as good as mine, but be prepared for some more back and forth before phone makers have figured out how to please our eyes, our hands, and our pants pockets all at the same time.

Rumor: Is This iOS 7 Running On An iPad?

Apple has yet to officially release iOS 7 beta on the iPad, which has caused speculation into what the new version of iOS will look like on the device. A new video from a Russian YouTube user Rozetked has released a video today, which shows an iPad running iOS 7 “alpha.”

Since Rozetked does not disclose how he got iOS 7 running on the iPad or any other details of the build,  we can’t be sure of the video’s authenticity. The video is interesting however, and provides us with a clearer picture of what we may see when Apple officially releases the iOS 7 beta for the iPad. The video shows the Notification Center and Control Center in proportion, and several of the native app icons resemble those of the iPhone iOS 7 beta release.

While a release date for iOS 7 on the iPad is still unknown, we will surely be seeing more news of its release in the near future.

What are your thoughts on Rozetked’s video? Does it look legit to you? Let us know.