While we've been getting in shape during Mobile Nations Fitness Month and sharing our tips and tricks with you all, we came across a pretty awesome use for the MOTOACTV recently. Highlighted on the Motorola blog is Christine Rolf, who has taken her MOTOACTV to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro and back for a good cause:

After hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu I wanted a bigger challenge. Kilimanjaro was it: the summit is 5895 meters/19,340 feet high. I hiked 62 kilometers in 7 days – first a 4,405 meter ascent followed by a 3,915 meter descent, through a total of 5 climate zones. I also wanted to raise money for Make-A-Wish Foundation where I’ve volunteered for over 10 years. The donations totaled over $2,500!

Amazing to say the least. Christine noted the MOTOACTV was a great tool to have in her arsenal for the climb and while we won't be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro any time soon – we're not going to disagree.

Source: Motorola

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/-VBay2-r4lY/story01.htm

STANDARD MICROSYSTEMS MENTOR GRAPHICS HARRIS MILLICOM INTL CELLULAR

Flash for mobile may just be a spectator at its own wake at this point, but the desktop browser plug-in is still alive and (reasonably) well. In fact, Adobe has a host of plans for its flagship multimedia platform, as outlined in its 2012 roadmap. It all starts with 11.2, which should be landing sooner, rather than later, with support for right and left mouse clicks, multithreaded video decoding and improved GPU acceleration support. That will be followed by Cyril and Dolores, which will also expand the list of hardware-accelerated video cards, as well as improve overall performance and add a few welcome tweaks, like supporting keyboard input in full screen mode. Finally, in 2013, we’ll see the debut of Flash Next — a completely overhauled platform with major updates to the runtime core and ActionScript language that are designed to “meet the needs of developers over the next five to 10 years.” Check out the source for full details but, be warned — it’s PDF only.

Flash roadmap reveals new features, improved GPU support, lack of retirement plans originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/zQR_XZsOvCs/

CYPRESS SEMICONDUCTOR SYKES ENTERPRISES INORATED MICROSEMI LSI

• 800MHZ dual-core processor
• Dimensions: 62.2 x 118.3 x 10.5mm
• Weight: 122g
• 3.8" WVGA display (480 x 800)
• Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS
• 5-megapixel (rear) camera
• Front-facing VGA camera
• Video playback/recording @ 720p
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• 4GB memory
• 768MB RAM
• Bluetooth 3.0
• Accelerometer, digital compass, proximity, NFC
• microSD (up to 32GB)
• 1500mAh Li-Ion battery

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/0NsJmFMVp5g/story01.htm

INFOCUS WESTERN DIGITAL NINTENDO TECHNITROL

Quite a lot has been written about the importance of due-diligence in a cloud environment. Sometimes the importance of security and compliance-related vetting in the cloud is easy to justify, like when you’re evaluating an off-premises public cloud hosted at a new service provider. Other times, executives might take some convincing.

Source: http://www.technewsworld.com/rsstory/74475.html

EASTMAN KODAK CO HCL TECHNOLOGIES RF MICRO DEVICES MOODYS

Yes, that’s right, I said adorable. Because Cueboy Quest really is!

You play an 8-bit cowboy whose goal on each level is to get to the door (and thus to the next level), but the door is often locked. To get it to open, you must shoot at one or more targets, and those targets aren’t always in your line of sight. For example, on one level the the target is a balloon which is stuck all the way at the other end of the screen. You must first nudge it free, and then watch it float up and try to shoot it before it floats clear off the screen. Your bullets are chunky pixels that have some weight – the have arcing trajectories, so you don’t always hit exactly where you aim.

There’s another level where you must jump on the balloon as it floats up, use it as a platform to get to the other end of the screen, and then turn to shoot it very quickly before it flies away. Each level is very short, and most of them are quite easy. And not only are the graphics 8-bit blocky, but they’re large too. Simply beautiful!

Cueboy Quest is an adorable 8-bit style physics game originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/02/22/cueboy-quest-is-an-adorable-8-bit-style-physics-game/

ROGERS COMMUNICATIONS NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR RADISYS NUANCE COMMUNICATIONS

Burrito Bison is a pretty simple game, but if you’re into gummy bears you might find it addictive.

As you may have guessed from the name, you’re a bison (not a burrito, though). In the course of your day-to-day grocery shopping, you’re abducted into a bag of gummy bears, and must now fend for yourself.

At the beginning of each round you launch yourself onto the marching gummy (gummi?) bears, while you’re being watched by a huge crowd of even more gummy bears. Your goal is to keep bouncing on the bears and earn more and more money while you do it. Every time you hit a gummy bear, you lose some momentum. If you hit the floor, you basically lose all of it.

But don’t give up just yet! You have an emergency thrust which you can use to gain some momentum and keep bouncing on those bears. This extra thrust gets refilled as you hit more bears.

There are also special gummy bears that give you extra thrust or extra money. The money comes in handy at the end of each round, when you can shop for cool stuff to make your bison even more effective against those gummy bears.

It’s a fun and colorful game that kept my interest for quite some time, and almost sent me running to the closest store to get some gummy bears!

Burrito Bison is a simple game for gummy bear lovers originally appeared on Download Squad on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/03/26/burrito-bison-is-a-simple-game-for-gummy-bear-lovers/

MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES EMULEX INFORMATICA

It has emerged that the underlying cause of RSA’s SecurID gaffe was the recently-reported zero-day vulnerability found in Adobe’s Flash Player.

The exploit, which used specially-crafted Flash embedding in Excel spreadsheets, was first reported on March 15 and has since been fixed. RSA was hacked sometime in the first half of March when an employee was successfully spear phished and opened an infected spreadsheet. As soon as the spreadsheet was opened, an advanced persistent threat (APT) — a backdoor Trojan — called Poison Ivy was installed. From there, the attackers basically had free reign of RSA’s internal network, which led to the eventual dissemination of data pertaining to RSA’s two-factor authenticators.

The attack is reminiscent of the APTs used in the China vs. Google attacks from last year — and indeed, Uri Rivner, the head of new technologies at RSA is quick to point out that that other big companies are being attacked, too: “The number of enterprises hit by APTs grows by the month; and the range of APT targets includes just about every industry. Unofficial tallies number dozens of mega corporations attacked [...] These companies deploy any imaginable combination of state-of-the-art perimeter and end-point security controls, and use all imaginable combinations of security operations and security controls. Yet still the determined attackers find their way in.”

What we’d like to know, though, is whether the attack on RSA was caused by Adobe’s lackadaisical approach to patching Flash — or was it the other way around? Was it the RSA attack that first brought the zero-day vulnerability to Adobe’s attention?

Security firm RSA attacked using Excel-Flash one-two sucker punch originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 06:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/06/security-firm-rsa-attacked-using-excel-flash-one-two-sucker-punc/

ARROW ELECTRONICS MICROSOFT VEECO INSTRUMENTS ON SEMICONDUCTOR

Later today, Firefox will undergo its biggest developmental upheaval ever. Mozilla-central, the source of nightly builds, will be renumbered to version 5 — and at long last, after years of wallowing around version 1, Mozilla’s rendering and layout engine, Gecko, will also have its version number updated to match Firefox.

Shortly thereafter, Firefox’s new channel system will be implemented. Firefox 5a2 will be introduced as the first Aurora build, and we should also see a Firefox 6 Nightly build. While we we’re not sure where they came from, one Sören Hentzschel seems to have unearthed the new Nightly and Aurora logos (see above), along with new About Firefox dialogs (after the break).

In other news, if you want to take a sneak peek at the new ‘channel changing’ technology that will be introduced in upcoming Firefox builds, head to about:config and create a new string called app.update.desiredChannel — the value doesn’t matter. Then open Help > About Firefox and you’ll be able to switch channel, but it doesn’t do anything just yet (image after the break). Here’s hoping that Firefox channel switching is smoother than Chrome.

Continue reading New Firefox Nightly and Aurora logos unearthed, and how to enable channel switching

New Firefox Nightly and Aurora logos unearthed, and how to enable channel switching originally appeared on Download Squad on Mon, 11 Apr 2011 07:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/11/new-firefox-nightly-and-aurora-logos-unearthed-and-how-to-enabl/

GOOGLE TELETECH HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL RECTIFIER MANTECH INTERNATIONAL

Mozilla Messaging, citing Mozilla’s increased focus on Web-borne communications, will be reintegrating with Mozilla Labs.

The Messaging subsidiary was formed in 2008 to focus on Thunderbird, but given Mozilla Labs’ current focus on identity and contact management, it now makes sense for the groups to be merged. Thunderbird will be unaffected by the change — some URLs might change, but that’s it — and presumably Messaging’s F1 and Raindrop will thrive in the Labs playground.

What this means for the end user — for the hundreds of millions of Firefox users — is that the next big additions will be communication- and messaging-oriented. Contacts and F1 will be almost certainly be baked into Firefox 5 or 6, both of which will be released this year — and, who knows, there might be something else even more exciting up Mozilla Labs’ sleeve!

Mozilla Messaging reintegrates with Labs, unifies focus on Web-based communication originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/05/mozilla-messaging-reintegrates-with-labs-unifies-focus-on-web-b/

MICROSEMI LSI EMC ATandT

Recently, Google has been busy beefing up Latitude to make it more competitive with other location apps — and more fun to use. Location history was added recently, iOS users can post check-ins via Latitude, and now Google has begun rolling out location-based deals which are tied to the service.

If you’re in the U.S., you can now score local savings at participating merchants by checking in with Latitude. Google will also be offering “status deals,” which users can unlock by visiting a particular merchant on a regular basis. Mashable notes three status levels: regular, VIP, and guru — though partners can apparently customize those titles if they choose.

Right now deals are available from merchants like American Eagle Outfitters, Arby’s, Finish Line, Macy’s, Quiznos, and RadioShack.

Google Latitude check-in deals now available across the US originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 08:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2011/04/08/google-latitude-check-in-deals-now-available-across-the-us/

ITRON RACKABLE SYSTEMS MEMC ELECTRONIC MATERIALS ASUSTEK COMPUTER