Apple engineer says a 2005 Steve Jobs ultimatum made the iPhone what it is today

Ahead of Apple's patent-infringement trial with Samsung next week, a former senior software engineer from the company has given an Apple-approved account of how the first iPhone came to be. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal, Greg Christie has given a fairly detailed version of the revolutionary device's early days, while some of the information was already known, there is a few interesting bits to come out of the article.

Christie was working on what would become software for the initial iPhone back in 2005, when Steve Jobs gave him and his team an ultimatum. The team was to show serious progress on the touch enabled phone in two weeks or Jobs would put someone else on the project.

With a threat of that nature coming from someone like Jobs, Christie and the "shockingly" small team felt the pressure to come up with "bigger ideas and bigger concepts." They prototyped the ideas on a plastic touch screen running on an older desktop Mac in order to emulate the lesser performance of a mobile processor.

After pouring over minute details like what the perfect scrolling speed and response was, and how to get conversation based text messaging just right, Christie managed to present Jobs a prototype that would keep him and his team on the iPhone project moving forward. After the two weeks, the prototype featured the now famous swipe-to-unlock feature, an entirely software based keyboard design, and the full suite of iPod-based music listening capabilities.

While it may seem that Christie and his colleagues could finally settle down and finish development on the device, settling down just wasn't something Jobs would allow. Christie describes the following two and a half years as a "marathon," with Jobs obsessing over every tiny detail of the project. He said Steve required updates every two weeks for the entire duration of development, in a top-secret, windowless room.

You can check out the full article over on The Wall Street Journal.

Google's new WebP software brings animated graphics and 25% faster display times

Google has been developing WebP software for some time and has now introduced a new version into the latest Chrome beta. The company has been trying to speed the internet up with its yet to be fully supported web image format. Google said the updated version can allow browsers to display images up to 25% faster than traditional formats.

Not only is it designed to speed things up, but it also appears that Google is attempting to simplify things and aims to replace existing formats with its supposed superior one. While Google is sure WebP both can and should replace all of the major formats, it is yet to convince browser company's like Mozillla to move away from the long used JPEG format, even with support from Facebook and Netflix. While Mozilla is hesitant to jump on board to say the least, many outside developers tend to agree with Google in terms of WebP being a superior format to what is currently out there.

Generally speaking, most images on the web are either in the lossy JPEG, transparency supporting PNG or classic animated GIF formats. However, Google says that WebP will reduce file sizes greatly compared to JPEG and will also combine many of the benefits of JPEG and PNG into a single unified format. WebP can take advantage of small compressed file sizes like JPEGs, the transparency currently available with PNGs, animated graphics like GIFs and higher quality lossless options.

Google has already been replacing images with WebP throughout its services online, including thumbnails on YouTube and logos on Google Play. In a recentblog post, Husain Bengali, a WebP optimizer at Google, said "the rollouts within Google combined have raised our aggregate data transfer savings tally to tens of terabytes every day." Bengali went on to say that not only does this mean faster page load times for users, but its also means "fewer bytes counted against metered data plans."

More on::techspot.com

Facebook announces $2 billion acquisition of virtual reality headset maker Oculus VR

Facebook has reached an agreement to acquire Oculus VR, makers of the pioneering Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, as part of a deal valued at $2 billion. The deal includes $400 million in cash and 23.1 million shares of Facebook common stock on top of a $300 million earn-out in cash and stock based on certain milestones according to a press release on the matter.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said mobile is the platform of today and now they're getting ready for the platforms of tomorrow. Oculus has the chance to create the most social platform ever and change the way we work, play and communicate, Zuckerberg added.

Most have associated the headset with gaming up to this point but with Facebook on board, the possibilities are suddenly wide open.

Brendan Iribe, co-founder and CEO of Oculus VR, said they are excited to work with Facebook to deliver the very best virtual reality platform in the world. As Iribe notes, it is a transformative and disruptive technology that enables people to experience the impossible and it’s only just the beginning.

The deal likely makes Oculus VR the most successful Kickstarter story to date which is impressive considering they haven’t even released a consumer product yet. A prototype started making noise in early 2012 and eventually hit the crowdfunding site during the summer of 2012, raising nearly $2.5 millionfrom the campaign.

During this time, the Rift caught the eye of legendary game developer John Carmack who ultimately resigned from id Software to work on the project full time. The company is now taking pre-orders for the final dev kit before the commercial release which still doesn’t have a date associated with it.

More on::techspot.com

New ‘Anti-Social’ App, Cloak, Lets You Avoid People

The whole point of social media is keep everyone connected and help you expand your number of friends and acquaintances, yet the new service named Cloak is turning the concept on its head and is aimed at helping you avoid everyone.

Created by the programmer Brian Moore and the former creative director of Buzzfeed Chris Baker, Cloak works by pulling public location data from Foursquare and Instagram. It determines the location of people you know and then alerts you if they are suspected of being nearby, giving you the chance to dodge them via a side-street.

This new kind of service has been termed an “anti-social app” or secretive app. It follows other apps like Snapchat and WhatsApp, which are geared towards providing private messaging services.

Cloak is described as a way to “avoid exes, co-workers, that guy who likes to stop and chat – anyone you’d rather not run into”.

Chris Baker expressed his feelings on the shift in attitude towards social media, saying: “Personally, I think we’ve seen the crest of the big social network.”

“Things like Twitter and Facebook are packed elevators where we’re all crammed in together… I think anti-social stuff is on the rise. You’ll be seeing more and more of these types of projects.”

However editor-in-chief of App Magazine, Nick Jones, thinks these types of apps are not created out of necessity but rather because developers are looking to explore new avenues in the social-media market.

“People are having to diversify their apps and find some unique angle to their app, and then try and sell it to Facebook and make a pretty penny.”

However, he admitted: “Secrecy has its advantages for people. It’s quite attractive.”

Does Cloak appeal to you? Who would you like to avoid?

More on::news.filehippo.com

How to Protect Google Chrome Browser with Password?

In present days everyone uses internet for different purposes and most of them uses Chrome browser to browse different websites, play games online and to do so many things. If you are the only user of your computer then there is no problem but if your PC is used by others then you must be worried about your settings, browsing history, saved passwords and everything what you did on internet. To prevent from this situation you can protect your browser with password, but no browser will provide an option to lock your browser with password.

Don’t worry we come up with one smart extension which protects your online session history, your web services passwords and so many other things.

ChromePW:

ChromePW is the ultimate extension for chrome users to protect their web browsers from others without accessing. It provides an incredible solution to lock down your browser with password. Actually all browsers have some security about storing passwords but no browser give full support to protect everything which is related to you on browser. This extension gives so many options which tighten your browser security. Here security means it doesn’t stop hacker attacks and malware attacks, it only protects your browser from other users who try to access physically.

How to Setup password Protection to Chrome Browser?

1. First of all you need to download chromePW extension from the below link, after downloading extension install it on your browser by clicking on Add button.

2. After installing it shows a message which means extension installed successfully, before using it you need to do some configurations. Click on Ok button to continue extension setup.

3. Now you need to enable this chrome extension on “Incognito mode” also, because someone try to open it onprivate browsing mode. After enable it on Incognito mode click on next button.

4. Now it shows another window with some FAQ(Frequently asked questions) and answers. It listed four questions about security of extension and provide some tips to harden your browser security. If you use nonwindows operating system then choose your operating system from drop down list. For future purpose print all question and answers.

5. After that click on Next button and you will see extension security settings. It have 4 widgets and each one have some sort of settings.

6. First type password which is not easy to guessed by others and again type the same password, type password hint which will be useful in case of forgetting password.

7. Click on save button to turn on password protection, you can set automatic lock for your browser after certain time. Then it will automatically locks your browser with password protection.

8. You must enable security mode because it protects chromepw extension being terminated by task manager. If anyone try to open another program while chrome browser locked it will automatically closed.

9. You can also block websites from this extension and if you want to reset this extension settings and password click on Reset Button.

As mentioned earlier this doesn’t provide full security because someone try to remove this extension folder who use your computer, so to get advanced security you must follow guidelines provided by this extension at the time of password setup. I try this extension in my chrome browser and it works efficiently without creating any problems. This will surely protect your browsing data, saved passwords and other important data stored on browser.

More on::alltechbuzz.net