Netflix clues viewers in on Christmas Eve service outage

Still wondering what the heck happened with Netflix on Christmas Eve? Cloud architect Adrian Cockroft has returned to fill in the details with an official blog post. As we already knew, Amazon Web Services was to blame for the issue -- the company issued an apology earlier today -- with the Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) service causing the outage. The interruption began at 3:30PM ET on December 24th, though some users had normal service until later that evening, at which point many TV-connected devices in the US, Canada and Latin America were affected. Notably, customers in the UK, Ireland and Nordic countries did not experience issues.

Netflix uses hundreds of ELBs, but only "a handful" failed -- devices using these specific ELBs, including game consoles, were unable to access the server. While the Elastic Load Balancers serving Mac and PC streaming were unaffected, those users experienced latency issues, and may have needed to reload a stream. Cockroft explains that at 1:30AM ET on Christmas Day, the ELBs were restored by AWS, and most users were reportedly up and running at that point, though some still experienced downtime throughout the morning. Ultimately, Netflix plans to improve redundancy, which will be costly and could take some time to accomplish. For now, let's hope that AWS manages to avoid future failures. You'll find Netflix's full explanation at the source link below.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Internet

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Source: The Netflix Tech Blog, Amazon Web Services

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/YL66g01m-64/

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social media: Virginia Town Releases Crime-Fighting App

Crime-fighting is tough. Look at Batman. That guy's a mess. Still, for most people, if you witness a crime you want to do something about it. And while screaming "citizen's arrest" seems about as toothless as a substitute teacher in ...

Source: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/crime-fighting-app/

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Gadgets Week In Review: Vision

Here are some stories from the past week on TechCrunch Gadgets: Create A Twisted Dreamscape Of Screaming Skulls With These DIY Animatronics Steve Jobs: The End Of An Era Jetty The Duct-Cleaning Robot Will Hunt You Down, Wash You With Dry Ice CineSkates: Roller Skates For Your Camera Video: ?Eyeborg? Replaces Eye With Functioning Wireless Video Camera

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/29/gadgets-week-in-review-vision/

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Watch Out: Your New Year's Midnight Delivery Messages on Facebook Aren't Private

You know how Facebook added that Facebook Stories feature that lets you automatically spam all your "friends" with automatic "Happy New Year" inanities? Well, beware because they aren't private, thanks to a security cock-up. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/iDNom5MFoy8/watch-out-your-new-years-midnight-delivery-messages-on-facebook-arent-private

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Daily Crunch: Click Roll

Here are some of yesterday’s stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: LaCie Adds Some Polish To Its NAS Units With ?NAS OS? AliveCor Turns Mobile Devices Into Low-Cost Heart Monitors, Raises $3 Million kandenchi: Designer Mouse That Looks Like A Battery CineSkates: Roller Skates For Your Camera Failbook Phone: AT&T Already Looking To Ditch The HTC Status, Says Source

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/24/daily-crunch-click-roll/

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Words With Friends for Android updated, promises "smoother game experience"

As several of you noted in the comments to our post asking for cross-platform iOS/Android games, Words With Friends for Android does not provide the smoothest gaming experience... and that's being rather charitable.

You might be happy to hear that a couple of days ago Zynga released an update which promises to solve many of the Android-specific issues, such as notifications not popping up.

Sadly, installing the update is not a smooth experience; you have to manually uninstall the previous version, and then go to the Android Market and install it. What's nice is that it doesn't lose your saved games - this screenshot shows a game I've started before the update and continued after updating.

How's the new update working out for you? Let us know in the comments!

Words With Friends for Android updated, promises "smoother game experience" originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 04 Mar 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/04/words-with-friends-for-android-updated-promises-smoother-game/

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Samsung offers free flip covers and TecTiles for GS III and Note II device registrations

If you just received a Galaxy S III or a Note II this holiday season, you could do yourself a favor and register it on Samsung's Facebook page to get even more goodies from Santa Sammy. What do you get in exchange for handing over some personal details and giving the Korean company access to your timeline? Why, a free flip cover and six TecTiles, which usually go for about $15 for a pack of five. We haven't heard much about wide adoption of these programmable NFC tags, but maybe it'll gain some traction after a recent 3.0 app update and this promotional giveaway. We're not sure why the offer doesn't extend to other Samsung phones, but maybe they just don't have enough of those pastel covers to go around.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung

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Via: Android Central

Source: Facebook (Samsung)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/29/samsung-free-flip-cover-tectiles/

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Alkaline Trio: Jaked on Green Beers

I'm home for the holidays, driving mom's car around, listening to my SICK high school CD collection. Uh huh, yeah, that's how I roll. Who's looking for a grown ass man? Because that's me. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/EpOpxxEmSxU/alkaline-trio-jaked-on-green-beers

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First Firefox 6 build next week, Firefox 7 by May, and aurora channel introduced

Mozilla's Engineering Project Manager, Christian Legnitto, has detailed the release schedule for Firefox 5, 6 and 7. If all goes to plan, Firefox 6.0a1 will be released next week, April 12, and Firefox 7.0a1 in the middle of May. The final build of Firefox 5 should be released on June 21, exactly three months after the release of Firefox 4.

Along with the faster 6-week release cadence, Firefox's new Chrome-like release channels have also been given names and anticipated update frequencies. The most notable change is the introduction of a new alpha channel -- which is analogous to Chrome Canary -- that will be called 'aurora' and will update nightly. Aurora will be where fixes and features are tested, and either approved for Beta, or backed out to Central. Aurora will have a new icon, too.

The Nightly (mozilla-central) channel will remain unchanged in name and frequency, but it will gain a new 'nightly icon.' The Beta (mozilla-beta) channel will remain as-is, with new builds rolling out weekly. The Release (mozilla-release) channel will also remain as-is, with security and stability updates coming every 6 to 12 weeks.

It should be noted that the names (including 'aurora') are not necessarily final, but it's unlikely that they'll change. We're also awaiting the arrival of the new 'channel switching' technology, which should arrive in the next few days -- in time for the release of Firefox 6 aurora!

First Firefox 6 build next week, Firefox 7 by May, and aurora channel introduced originally appeared on Download Squad on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 05:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/07/first-firefox-6-build-next-week-firefox-7-by-may-and-aurora-ch/

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Battery Status: Always Know How Much Juice You've Got

Keeping track of battery life on your phone can be a major stressor for the obsessive compulsive. Battery Status is the perfect app to put those worries to bed. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/GCWi-x_BOfc/battery-status-always-know-how-much-juice-youve-got

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Ex-fugitive arraigned on charges tied to $50 million mortgage fraud scheme

An Ashburn real estate agent who fled the United States in July 2009 was arraigned in Loudoun County Circuit Court on Tuesday on charges stemming from an alleged mortgage scheme that defrauded lenders of $50 million, according to authorities.

Source: http://feeds.washingtonpost.com/click.phdo?i=df3934c6f76f5d83e2ffb4217cd8153b

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Thousands of iPad Apps Is that All it Has to Offer?

The mad rush to get hold of an iPad certainly led a lot of people to believe that this nifty little gadget would put a smart phone to shame. The fact that users would be able to get thousands of apps on their iPad might have had something to do with craze and Apple did make it one of the selling points about the device. Apple marketed the iPad as having specifically designed apps and that these ranged from leisure [...]

Source: http://tabletbuzzblog.com/thousands-of-ipad-apps-is-that-all-it-has-to-offer/

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GNOME 2: Still king of the Linux desktop

It seems fair to say that Linux users enjoy a degree of choice that's unmatched by the proprietary players in the desktop computing world, what with the wide variety of both distributions and desktop environments from which they can choose.

For that reason, it's all the more striking when large numbers of users express a marked preference for the same thing.

GNOME

The GNOME 3.4 desktop (Click image to enlarge.)

Case in point? GNOME 2.

Despite the best efforts of projects including Ubuntu and GNOME itself to entice users with new, mobile-style interfaces?namely, Unity and GNOME 3?legions of Linux users have resisted with equal vigor, demonstrating in no uncertain terms that their longtime favorite still holds the key to their computing hearts.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2022923/gnome-2-still-king-of-the-linux-desktop.html

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Who should I follow on Twitter? Android edition

Welcome to another edition of WSIFOT and this time we're broaching Android -- and some related Google services. After the break, we've collected some official Twitter channels, alongside writers, personalities, thinkers and tinkerers who follow Google's tablet and smartphone OS pretty closely. Our list is a work in progress, so if you think we've missed out any important Android-centric 140-character authors, let us know through Twitter or in the comments below.

Continue reading Who should I follow on Twitter? Android edition

Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Software, Mobile, Google

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/28/who-should-i-follow-on-twitter-android/

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Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android

Google, in an interesting but not entirely unexpected twist, will not be open-sourcing Android 3.0 Honeycomb for the foreseeable future.

Historically, Android is usually open-sourced via the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) a few days or weeks after the code is finalized. While this departure from the norm won't affect OEMs like HTC and Motorola that have access to internal builds of Android, small-time developers will likely have to wait months before rolling their own distributions.

As to why Google is holding back Honeycomb, its reasons are actually rather rational. Honeycomb, while originally intended to run on all mobile form factors, is only ready for deployment on tablets. "To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," says Andy Rubin, the head of Google's Android group. "We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut."

In other words, Google wants to prevent OEMs and homebrew developers like Cyanogen from rolling their own smartphone versions of Honeycomb -- it doesn't want to see the same bitter-tasting tabletified bastardization that occurred with Android 2.1 and 2.2 last year.

Continue reading Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android

Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/25/google-holds-back-on-open-sourcing-honeycomb-heralds-shift-android/

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Is One Pound Fish Man the Next Trololo Man?

This is Muhammad Shahid Nazir aka One Pound Fish Man, as many people call him. You probably don't know about him, but he's huge in the United Kingdom already—a YouTube sensation that is quickly racking up views and becoming a freaky internet sensation, much like Trololo Man. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/ELqnZI5Ux6Y/is-one-pound-fish-man-the-next-trololo-man

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Win a $10 Google Play Gift Card because it's Dec. 27

Now some of you may think that we forgot about today's $10 Google Play Gift Card giveaway. And that's not entirely true. We remembered it. About 6 hours ago. And then we forgot about it. But then we remembered it again, and all is right in the world.

So, in the end, we're giving away another $10 Google Play Gift Card today as we march toward 31 of 'em -- yes, one for each day in December.

What can you do with a Google Play Gift Card, you ask? You can buy apps, for one. Music for another. Magazines, movies and TV shows for three for and five. Or just flash one around in public and let people know what's up. 'Cause you're a baller.

To enter, just leave a comment in this post. A comment that rhymes will stand out the most. If Line 2 sounds like Line 1, you'll know that you're done, and increase the chances that you will have won. Or something. Just leave a rhyming post. Good luck!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/Pr9XBms0c14/story01.htm

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Google Feeds More Personal Data Into Search Trials

Google is a company that's always in Beta, goes the joke, but there's some truth to it. The company began its latest search field trial a few months ago, and it just added a few new capabilities to make it more interesting: the ability to search for personal information stored in Gmail and Google Drive, such as reservations, recent purchases and package tracking.

Source: http://ectnews.com.feedsportal.com/c/34520/f/632000/s/26d847a9/l/0L0Stechnewsworld0N0Crsstory0C769290Bhtml/story01.htm

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Be Prepared: Build Your Own Backup Battery

"Normal connected lifestyle to resume in due course," could have been the tag line recently in New York and New Jersey. If there was one lesson learned from Hurricane Sandy, it was that even the most sophisticated of urban areas can experience an unexpected loss of essential services.

Source: http://ectnews.com.feedsportal.com/c/34520/f/632000/s/26cb6107/l/0L0Stechnewsworld0N0Crsstory0C7690A60Bhtml/story01.htm

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