Twopcharts says 44% of all Twitter accounts were never used

Shane McGlaun | Internet & Websites | Apr 14, 2014 1:23 PM CDT

Some new stats have been publishes by a third party company called Twopcharts looking at Twitter. At last count, Twitter has about 974 million users, but it's less clear how many of those accounts are still in use. Twopcharts has offered up some numbers that claim twitter is much less active than the 974 million user number might suggest.

The stats that Twopcharts had gathered claim that 44% of those Twitter accounts have never made a single tweet. That means that 44% of Twitter's accounts have never been used. The company goes on to claim that only 126 million of Twitter accounts have sent a tweet in the past 30 days.

Twitter is tight lipped about its stats for the most part and doesn't like to talk about user retention. What Twitter has said in the past is that it has 241 million average monthly users as of December 31 2013. Twopcharts also claims that 391 million Twitter accounts have 0 followers and about 232 million haven't followed a single Twitter user themselves.

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HTC One M8 with plastic case rumored for launch next month

Shane McGlaun | Mobile Devices | Apr 14, 2014 11:48 AM CDT

The HTC One M8 has been around for a while now and has proven to be one of the more popular smartphones HTC has launched in recent memory. The device launched late last month and prices have started to come down a bit on the smartphone. Amazon started offering a special with a new contract last week that allowed buyers to get the M8 for $150.

For those who don't want a contract, buying a phone outright and unlocked is the way to go. The M8 is quite expensive if you go that route costing around $680 unlocked. That is a lot of money for a smartphone no matter how you cut it.

A new rumor making the rounds suggests that next month a new version of the One M8 will hit the market with a key change to significantly reduce the cost. The change is said to be eliminating the aluminum case of the current version in favor of a plastic case.

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Sprint WeGo lets parents know where kids are and stay in contact

Shane McGlaun | Mobile Devices | Apr 14, 2014 10:46 AM CDT

Part of having kids is letting them become independent enough to go palces on their own. That is tough for a parent because they need to know where kids are at all times for safety reasons. Sprint has announced a new device that is specifically made to let parents keep up with kids and help kids feel safe.

The device is called the Sprint WeGo and it is a small handheld mobile phone that supports texting and talk. WeGo offers kids limited SMS texting options to keep them from talking to people the parent doesn't know without permission. The device will alert parents via text or email if the phone exceeds a pre-set speed, if the panic alarm is pulled, or when SMS messages are received.

WeGo also has on demand GPS functions that let the parent track their child on a map at anytime from a PC, Android device, or iOS device. Scheduled find services keep an eye on the kids to make sure they are where they are supposed to be at a specific time. The mobile device is shatterproof and can survive drops up to 12-feet high and is water and dust resistant too. WeGo can be purchases for 24 monthly payments of $9.99 and has 1000 talk minutes and 1000 text messages.

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The Netherlands is now home to glow-in-the-dark roads

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | Apr 14, 2014 5:35 AM CDT

The Netherlands is testing out a new technology on a 500m, or 0.3 miles, stretch of highway - using light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings. These markings have replaced streetlights on the stretch of highway.

Rewinding back to 2012, Studio Roosegaarde proposed the design, and after much jumping through the usual government hoops, the finished product is shaping up incredibly well. The studios founder and lead designer, Daan Roosegaarde, said: "One day I was sitting in my car in the Netherlands, and I was amazed by these roads we spend millions on but no one seems to care what they look like and how they behave. I started imagining this Route 66 of the future where technology jumps out of the computer screen and becomes part of us".

The future of this new roll out will include weather markings, where snowdrops would appear when the temperature would hit a certain level. The glow-in-the-dark stretch of highway at the moment uses a photo-luminescent powder that is integrated into the road paint, something that was developed in conjunction with Heijmans, a road construction company.

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Apple to release an all-new design iPhone this year, 5.5-inch model

Anthony Garreffa | Mobile Devices | Apr 14, 2014 3:32 AM CDT

We've heard so many rumors that Apple would release a new iPhone this year, while other rumors point to two new iPhones to be released from the company. Well, now we have KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi Kuo predicting that the company will release two 'all-new design' iPhones, coming in 4.7- and 5.5-inch variants.

The 4.7-inch iPhone would be released sometime in Q3, where we should see it unveiled toward the end of September - but then there's the case of the second iPhone. This iPhone would be much bigger, sitting at 5.5 inches, and would be released toward the end of this year. There's not much known about this 'all-new design', but I'm expecting a big departure from what we're used to from the iPhone - and it's about damn time.

Considering we already had a "newly designed" from the ground up with the iPhone 5, what was all of that about when Apple did that? After five years of no changes to the iPhone, we had a big change. But now that Samsung has become an almost unstoppable threat for the company, Apple has been forced to go back to the drawing board it seems. Gone are the days of marketing videos pushing that you can use the iPhone with just one hand, and that any other phone that makes you do this is inferior.

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Google sees Android KitKat adoption slower than Jelly Bean

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Apr 14, 2014 1:29 AM CDT

Google isn't seeing massive adoption rates no Android 4.4 KitKat, even though the updated mobile OS is capable of working on more devices than the OS it succeeded on. KitKat's adoption rate is sitting at a lower point than Jelly Bean was when it first launched.

Chitika's number crunching abilities see that Android 4.4 KitKat is on around 10% of devices, six months after it was launched. After six months of Jelly Bean being available, it was on 14% of devices. Chitika explains: "[L]ooking beyond the device type breakdown, on a wider scale, KitKat has not progressed quite as quickly as Jelly Bean in North America from an adoption perspective. We previously observed Jelly Bean users generating 13.6% of North American Android Web traffic approximately 24 weeks following its debut on the Nexus 7. This overall number is 10.1% for KitKat as of this study, close to 22 weeks following its release on the Nexus 5".

Chitika has analyzed just North American numbers here, with its ad impressions blasting onto tens of millions of US and Canadian Android-based devices between March 31, and April 6, 2014. When it comes to the US, around 61.8% of devices are running a version of Jelly Bean. 20.3% of traffic is coming from Gingerbread-based devices, while Ice Cream Sandwich sits on 21.3% devices.

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Samsung's region locking on the Galaxy S5 is harsh

Anthony Garreffa | Mobile Devices | Apr 14, 2014 12:36 AM CDT

Samsung may have just launched its new Galaxy S5 in over 125 countries around the world, but if you want to use a Galaxy S5 from one country in another - region locking has been stamped into the new flagship smartphone.

Samsung now requires a user to make a five-minute phone call on the Galaxy S5 with a local SIM card before the device can be used with SIM cards from other regions. A warning message on the European version of the Galaxy S5 reads: "This product should be activated with a SIM card issued from a mobile operator within Europe. (as defined EU/EEA, Switzerland and the following Non-EEA countries Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (F.Y.R.O.M), Monaco, Montenegro, San Marino, Serbia and Vatican City.)"

The South Korean electronics giant adds: "To use SIM cards from other regions, a cumulative call over five minutes must first be made with the SIM card from European operators". This isn't something that Samsung is doing to hurt its consumers, but it is trying to stop "grey" imports of its products, which will stop it from bleeding unnecessary lost profits around the world.

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James Cameron talks VR movies, still hasn't tried out Oculus Rift

James Cameron is pretty much a household name thanks to directing movies like The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgement Day, oh and Avatar. Cameron was asked some interesting questions during his Reddit AMA session.

Cameron was asked on whether he would be making any movies using VR devices, such as the Oculus Rift, where he said: "I personally would be very interested to find a way to incorporate VR and a narrative-filmmaking experience. So a narrative directed experience that has individuated pathways where you have choices that you make in real-time, I think that would be a lot of fun. I think it would be very technically daunting and expensive, to do it as the same quality level as a typical feature, but it would be fun to experiment with".

He continued, saying: "It sounds like a lot of fun. I don't think it would take over the feature film market though. I'm very familiar with VR, but I haven't seen the specific Oculus Rift device". Cameron will be getting his hands-on Oculus VR's headset soon enough, where the director of Avatar said: "I'm interested in it. I'm meant to see it some time in the next month or so, but I've been familiar with VR since its inception. In fact, virtual reality is a way of describing the way we work on Avatar, we work in a virtual workspace all day long. We use a 'virtual camera' which is how I create all the shots that are CG in the film, a window into a virtual reality that completely surrounds me".

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IRS missed Windows XP deadline, pays millions to Microsoft for support

Michael Hatamoto | Hacking, Security & Privacy | Apr 12, 2014 11:57 PM CDT

The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) didn't migrate from Microsoft Windows XP before the April 8 end of support deadline, and will pay millions to Microsoft for extended support.

Microsoft pulled the plug on its popular 13-year-old operating system, urging users to migrate to Windows 7 or 8/8.1. However, millions of PCs are still running XP and haven't been migrated, including many business PCs.

"Now we find out that you've been struggling to come up with $30 million to finish migrating to Windows 7, even though Microsoft announced in 2008 that it would stop supporting Windows XP past 2014," said Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla), chairman of the House Financial Services and General Government subcommittee, in a statement. "I know you probably wish you'd already done that."

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Micron licenses Avago's 28nm 30Gbps Serializer / Deserializer

Charles Gantt | Storage | Apr 11, 2014 9:27 PM CDT

Today Miron Technology announced that it has secured a licensing deal with Avago Technologies to utilize its 28nm Low Power 30Gbps Serializer/Deserializer (SerDes) IP for use in Micron's next generation Hybrid Memory Cube (HMC) devices. Micron's Hybrid Memory Cube technology is recognized throughout the industry as a breakthrough technology that had changed the landscape for future memory solutions.

"Avago is an established leader in the development and delivery of high-speed SerDes cores with an offering that is very well suited for integration into our HMC product line," said Tom Eby, vice president of Micron's Compute and Networking Business Unit. "Based on its advanced performance and low power, we are confident that our customers will benefit from the presence of the Avago SerDes on both sides of the memory channel."

"Micron HMC devices use advanced through-silicon vias (TSVs)-vertical conduits that electrically connect a stack of individual chips-to combine high-performance logic with Micron's state-of-the-art DRAM," Micron said in a release. "HMC has been recognized by industry leaders and influencers as the long-awaited answer to the growing gap between the performance improvement rate of DRAM and processor data consumption rates. In 2013, Micron's HMC device was named Memory Product of the Year by EE Times, EDN and other leading electronics publications."

Continue reading: Micron licenses Avago's 28nm 30Gbps Serializer / Deserializer (full post)

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