allheart55 Cindy E

Once upon a time, Google had a dream. A floating dream. They wanted a showroom at sea, housed in a large barge. Unfortunately, this plan never got off the ground (or, um, sea) and now the Google Barge that never was is headed off to a sad fate: the scrap yard. The barge is four-stories high, made of 63 shipping containers. It was built in Connecticut before heading across the nation to the West Coast. A similar barge also appeared in San Francisco last year. Google said the barges would be "an interactive space where people can learn about new technology." The barge was supposed to head to New York after, where the technorati could check out different gadgets within it. But the barge was never finished, and the project was essentially abandoned, though Google has not disclosed any reason why or provided further details about the project. The barge has been sitting in the Portland harbor since last year. This week, it was moved to Turner's Island Cargo Terminal in South Portland. There, it will be taken apart. Lance Hanna, the deputy harbor master at Portland Harbor, told the Portland Press Herald the 63 containers would be taken apart and sent to be scrapped. On the bright side, the city of Portland earned $400,000 in property taxes from the docked barge that did nothing. This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/08/google-scraps-barge/375453/

I don't know about Sprint but T-Mobile has always been really good about it. Several times in the past, I have had phones from different carriers and they assisted me with unlocking them.

Beginning Friday, August 1st, it is once again legal to unshackle your carrier-locked cell phone in the United States. President Obama on Friday signed the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act into law, thus giving cell phone users the legal right to unlock their handsets. Smartphones are often sold locked by wireless carriers in the U.S., meaning that the devices can only operate on the contracted carrier’s network despite being technically compatible with other networks. This new law will make unlocking those cell phones for use on other networks via a third party legal once again after an amendment to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act made it illegal last year. “This effort began with a digital petition on the White House’s We the People site, an online platform where citizens can offer ideas for the Administration to take action on important issues facing our country,” Senator Patrick Leahy and President Obama’s economic advisor Jeff Zients wrote on the White House blog. “A digital rights activist named Sina Khanifar submitted a simple request: restore an exception to the law to let consumers take their mobile phone to the carrier that best suits their needs by ‘unlocking’ the device. The post continued, “The petition drew an extraordinary response, with more than 114,000 citizens making their voices heard. And within two weeks, the White House answered with a call to action, laying out steps the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), industry, and Congress could take to ensure copyright law would not undermine wireless competition.” http://news.yahoo.com/finally-cell-phone-unlocking-legal-u-once-again-193012201.html

It sounded to good to be true. I've been able to get away with that when the hardware components were close but never with two completely different CPU's. (AMD v. Intel)

Facebook Inc said service to the world's largest online social network was fully restored on Friday, following a widespread outage that affected users in multiple countries. "Earlier this morning, some people had trouble accessing Facebook for a short time. We quickly investigated and have fully restored service for everyone. We’re sorry for the inconvenience," Facebook said in an emailed statement. Facebook, which has 1.32 billion monthly users, is still investigating the incident, but all signs suggest a "technical" failure rather than any suspicious activity, said a person familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because the probe is private. Some visitors to the site on Friday were greeted with a message that read "Sorry, something went wrong. We're working on getting this fixed as soon as we can." It was not immediately clear how widespread the disruption was, though Reuters was aware of users having trouble accessing the site in the United States, Chile and India. (Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Andrew Hay and Richard Chang)

So sinister, you won't even know it's there Ah, the USB. The framework holding our digital lives together. The one we can always rely on. And no matter how many times we pull you out without ejecting first, you still work anyway. USB, we love you. But the USB could also become a weapon of mass digital destruction. According to Wired, security researchers have reverse engineered the firmware that controls basic USB functions. But even worse, they've written a piece of malware called BadUSB that can be put onto a USB and "completely take over a PC, invisibly alter files installed from the memory stick, or even redirect the user's internet traffic." That doesn't sound too good to us. Hidden in plain sight Because the malware is actually hidden in the firmware, be it on a thumb drive or a keyboard, it's very, very difficult to delete. "You can give it you your IT security people, they scan it, delete some files, and give it back to you telling you it's 'clean'," said security researcher Karsten Nohl. "The cleaning process doesn't even touch the files we're talking about." The pair of researchers will be demonstrating their findings at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas. But for now, you're best advised to not go sticking your USBs into any computers you don't trust. IT security in 2014: the threats and the solutions

You're welcome!

No worries, I changed it for you. You will have to log in the next time using N3. :D

I also have one similar to it. I bought it at the same time I purchased a small air compressor unit.

Hi N3 and a big welcome to Free PC Help Forum! Did you want to use N33 or change it to N3?

I figured out why the Lumina 521 (Windows 8) is so cheap. They just came out with the Lumina 530 (Windows 8.1) http://conversations.nokia.com/2014/07/23/lumia-530/

Microsoft has tried to push standards with its mobile Internet Explorer browser, but unfortunately the wider web largely develops specifically for the webkit rendering engine and the iPhone. That’s left a lot of mobile websites not rendering properly in Internet Explorer mobile, and a frustrating user experience. Twitter and a number of Google web sites do not render correctly in Windows Phone, but Microsoft thinks it has an answer. With the upcoming Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, Microsoft is tweaking its mobile browser to better support sites that were designed for an iPhone. The approach means Microsoft is adding non-standard web platform features, but the result is a much better experience for Windows Phone users. Some of the changes involve correcting problems where Internet Explorer is not recognized as a mobile browser, or times when web developers use old and proprietary webkit-prefixed features. All of these issues result in Windows Phone displaying a web site that’s not fully mobile optimized, or doesn’t render correctly at all. Microsoft isn’t giving up on web standards in favor of webkit, but it’s certainly a step back and recognition of the reality of mobile websites today. Mozilla does similar fixes for Firefox, and the two companies are collaborating to record broken sites at webcompat.com. Ironically, Microsoft’s issues are not too dissimilar to the ones its rivals faced in the Internet Explorer 6 era, when the software maker ignored web standards back when it was the dominant browser. Before, left, and after with Windows Phone 8.1 Update 1, right. Microsoft estimates that its changes will improve more than 40 percent of the top 500 mobile websites in Internet Explorer. The company has posted a number of sample images, with Twitter, Baidu, The New York Times, Answers, and Macy’s set to benefit from the changes. It’s not clear if Google Maps and Gmail, which render badly on Windows Phone, will benefit from the changes, but Windows Phone users will certainly benefit from a lot of mobile sites rendering properly in future.

My bad. :confused: You can barely get into my computer closet either. Although it's all organized, getting to it is another story. o_O

Well, you still have the walk in closet, Rich. :eek:

Free resources to make your job easier You know that creating brilliant content is key to driving traffic to your website. Without valuable content that engages your audience, writing blogs and posting to social media becomes a lot like throwing paint against the wall and hoping it sticks. You put something out in cyberspace multiple times a week and hope that your audience is reading it and becoming inspired enough to fill out a form or inquire about your product. Deep down, though, you realize this “strategy” is not effective. You know you need to publish content in the form of blog posts, infographics, videos or checklists that your audience craves. Providing content your consumers want to absorb is the best way to drive traffic to your site, generate leads and, ultimately, increase sales. For many companies, though, taking the time to develop a well-planned content calendar that addresses the right keyword phrases and resonates with specific buyer personas is a nice dream instead of a daily reality. Too many companies are too short-staffed or lack expert the content creators necessary to develop a comprehensive content marketing plan to maximize SEO and increase website conversion rates. Fortunately for these companies, several free tools exist that make content creation easy and effective for your organization. Whether you are looking to create engaging blog posts, informative infographics or organized and shareable presentations, these resources can help you maximize your in-house resources to produce the engaging content you desire for your website or social media platforms. Check out this list of free tools designed to help make it easier for you to design and post effective and valuable online content. Tools For Curating Content A major challenge in developing strong online content is knowing what to talk about. Utilizing content curation tools helps you pay attention to what your customers are reading about and sharing online so that you can provide the same type of information that will get them reading about and sharing your content (which helps increase SEO and, hopefully, conversion rates). Feedly Sites like Feedly aggregate blog content in an RSS feed so that you can stay up-to-date on the topics that matter to you (and to your customers) to know which hot topics you should be posting about. This site is organized graphically, making is easy to find the topics you find most relevant. The Tweeted Times This Twitter app compiles news in your Twitter stream and ranks it by popularity among your friends. The app lets you create customized newspapers on any topic you find interesting, so you can monitor updates specific to your business or industry. Because it updates in real time, you always know what is the most up-to-date information being shared online. List.ly This online tool helps organizations curate, crowdsource, and engage readers through a live list embedded directly into blog posts. Among other features, this tool allows you to poll those already reading your blog to learn just what it is they like most about your blog and want to see more of. You can even use social media sites like HootSuite and Pinterest to pay attention to what your users are talking about online. Set up streams with designated keywords within HootSuite to monitor conversations on certain topics or search boards in Pinterest to see what types of visual content your customers find most engaging. This will help direct you in the types of content your marketing team should be creating for your company. Tools for Creating Content Now that you know what your audience wants to know about, it is important to generate content that speaks to them. Whether you want to use text or graphics to best communicate your message, these tools can assist you in presenting your information in a way that makes sense to your readers. Canva Does your audience crave infographics? Do you find them time consuming and difficult to produce? Websites like Canva allow you to produce your own graphics using a supply of templates and images sourced for free. With a step-by-step tutorial and an intuitive platform, just about anyone on your team can create visual images that convey the desired message to your audience. SlideShare Anyone who has ever sat in on a lecture, seminar or other presentation knows how effective slide-based presentations can be at conveying a message. If you have a lot of information to share on a certain topic that would best be communicated with graphics and text, consider using SlideShare. This site makes it easy to crete and share presentations on across the web and on social media platforms. ThingLink The fun site enables you to upload and image and add icons from ThingLink’s library to create your own custom interactive image, video or message. Your readers can interact with these icons that you are able to embed into your blog post or website. You can also share the image organically or through social channels like Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr. Tools for Distributing Content All this content is great, but it is meaningless if you don’t share it with your users. These tools help you distribute your message to the people who care most about what you are talking about. HootSuite We mentioned it briefly before as a way to monitor conversations, but HootSuite also helps you participate in the conversation as well. This site allows you to manage all of your social media accounts, track mentions, respond to fan interaction, and schedule posts all within the app. Because you can schedule one post to multiple platforms, it requires less time to distribute your content across multiple channels. And we all love efficient solutions, right? MailChimp If you want to reach your customers directly through their inbox, email services like MailChimp provide easy-to-use platforms to create and send an email to a designated contact list. A variety of templates and designs makes it easy to plug in your information, schedule your mailing and track results from your customer database. Click to Tweet You’ve written great content, published it on your blog and posted it to your social media profiles. But how do you get others to talk about your content? using services like Click to Tweet make it easy to provide bite-sized bits of content from your larger posts that readers can immediately post on their own Twitter account with just one click. Because you can customize the tweet, you can include a link back to your site or your Twitter handle to gain additional followers and shares. Content is key for successful web-based marketing. But you don’t have to be an expert or have a huge marketing team to have a successful online marketing plan. With these free and fun resources, your team can create engaging visual and text-based content that appeals to your audience and is easily shareable for increased SEO and SERP results. 9 Content Marketing Tools You Should be Using but Aren’t

I don't care for the white but it's not a deal breaker. An otterbox will cover it....:D You can keep your white tower, it's not for me.:big_ha:

Nope, they aren't refurbished, they are brand new. This was definitely a great deal as I paid $129.99 for my first one. The only down side, which I didn't notice until it was delivered, these are white.