Top 5 features coming with Android 5.0 (lollipop)

Top 5 features coming to your phone with Android Lollipop:

Google is set to unveil its biggest overhaul to the Android operating system yet – Android 5.0, also known as Android Lollipop.

The new operating system – designed for Android smartphones, tablets and Android smartwatches – features a sleek new design and many long-awaited features, including improved notification controls.

Here are some of the standout features you can expect from Lollipop:

New design, new appearance:

Lollipop is garnering a lot of attention for its appearance.

The OS has a new colour scheme, different typography, and boasts realistic lighting and shadows – which Google says will help people navigate their devices better.

Apple users may notice some similarities between Lollipop and iOS 8, the iPhone’s latest operating system. Windows and graphics appear much flatter than previous versions – much like Apple’s redesign – and transitions between apps will appear more animated.

Some apps will even change the background colour of the display depending on the time of day.

Better notifications:

One of the more useful changes to Lollipop is the way in which users can manage notifications.

The OS now allows users to respond or dismiss notifications directly from the lock screen and when running other apps. Users can also control what apps send them banner notifications and how much information is included in the preview.

To cut down on disruptions, Lollipop has “Priority Mode,” which only allows notifications from important people to come through – all other notifications are muted.

Users can schedule a daily “downtime” for their phone in Priority Mode where only important notifications will get through – which might come in handy for anyone whose notifications keeps them awake at night.

Improved battery:

Google is hoping to boost the battery power across all devices with special battery-saving settings in Lollipop.

Users are now able to monitor individual app’s battery consumption. The OS also includes a battery saving feature that Google claims will extend device use by up to 90 minutes.

Multiple user accounts:

While some Android tablets have previously supported more than one user profile on a device, Android-powered smartphones haven’t – until now.

Lollipop now allows users to set up multiple user profiles on smartphones and tablets. The feature also lets users access their messages and contacts by logging onto a friend’s Android smartphone.

There is also a guest profile option that users can set up, which will prevent friends from snooping through your phone if they want to play on it.

Google Fit:

With Lollipop comes Google’s new fitness hub, dubbed Google Fit.

Read Also: Play Hidden games on Android Lollipop

Google Fit – which is similar to Apple’s Health app – uses sensors built into the user’s smartphone to track daily activities like walking, running and biking. Users will be able to keep track of their fitness or weight loss achievements by setting daily goals – Google’s default goal is at least an hour of activity a day, but it can be customized to meet each user’s fitness level.

Android, Android 5.0, Android Lollipop, Android Wear, Apple, fitness, Google, Google Fit, iOS, iOS 8, Mobile Operating Systems, Nexus, Notifications, smartphones, tablets.

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How to Play the Hidden Games on Android Lollipop

Android Lollipop:

We all love hidden games, did you know each version of Android has hidden Easter eggs popped in by bored developers? The latest Lollipop release is no exception. This time it’s a hidden version of possibly the most annoying surprise hit of 2013 a version of the FlappyBird game.

For anyone that spent the last year in an underground bunker, Flappy Bird was a simplistic side scroller created by a small Vietnamese developer. Despite it’s basic graphics, one click controls and extreme difficulty (many players never got past 1 point), it was a runaway hit across the globe. Even more bizarrely, the original creator removed it from the Apple and Google stores after a few months because he felt guilty that he had created such an addictive game that was wasting so much of peoples time. Other sources pointed out that the removal of the game was more likely to be because the developer used graphics of green pipes stolen from Super Mario to act as obstacles. To add to all the strangeness, phones that had Flappy Bird pre-installed then starting selling on eBay for ridiculous prices.

Now you can re-live the experience on any Android device running Lollipop (Android 5.0). Simply go to the Settings page and choose ‘About Phone.’ Tap and hold the Lollipop logo, be patient you may have to wait a few seconds, and the game should then just launch. If it doesn’t launch, try tapping several times on the Android version number and then tap and hold the Lollipop logo. A larger lollipop will rise up and the hidden Flappy Bird game should launch. It’s free to play but don’t expect your phone to now fetch an enormous price on eBay, that horse has bolted.

Read Also: 

How to swap Heads in Photoshop
How to get More Followers on Twitter
How to save battery life on smartphones (Specially iPhone)

Although the offending pipes have been replaced with lollipops and the bird is now the Android logo, this one is just as hard (and as annoying) as the original, enjoy the frustration, if you score more than five, you beat me!

Android, Lollipop, Hidden Games, Flappy Bird game, Play Hidden Games, Mobile, Smart Phones, Gadgets, How to.

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How to Swap Heads in Photoshop

Learn to Swap Heads on Photoshop:

Sometimes you don’t want to spend hours creating the perfect image, you don’t want to carefully fix every small mistake and make the most convincing photo collage the world has ever seen, sometimes you just want to stick someone’s head on someone else for humorous effect. Here’s a quick and simple way of doing just that.

We’ll use Batman and Robin as an example, the proper Batman and Robin, Adam West and Burt Ward. We’re using the caped crusaders for two reasons:

1) Because they both have very different colours and shapes in their heads and bodies, one is larger and all dark colours and wears a cowl, the other is smaller and all bright colours and just has an eye mask. This makes them a good example of changing heads on two very different individuals.

2) Because sixties Batman and Robin are cool. They just are.

Open your image in Photoshop, in this case we are going to swap the heads, it works much better when the backgrounds to the two heads is similar. Use the crop tool to select a square around one of the heads, copy it and move the copy over the other head. Resize and tilt the head so it roughly matches the head you are replacing, ideally make it slightly larger. Select the eraser tool, a brush size about a quarter the size of the head you are replacing, and a soft edge to the brush, about 30%. Now use the soft eraser to delete the square edges around your replaced head. If the background is similar you should get away with the two background blending, as we have here with Batman and Robin.

Read Also: How to get more and more Followers on Twitter

Repeat the above steps for head two, erasing as close as you can to the edge of the head, but remembering not to actually erase any of the head, just enough of the backgrounds to blend the two together. It won’t win any awards, but it takes less than 30 seconds and if you are just trying to send a jokey email image, it’s an ideal little trick.

Photoshop, Swap, Heads, Picture Editing, Adobe Photoshop, How to Swap Heads in Photoshop.

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How to Get More Followers on Twitter

Get Followers on Twitter Easily:

If you use Twitter regularly, you’ll have noticed that they are now pushing users into buying promotional packages. Twitter introduced promoted tweets way back in March 2012 and they have been met with mixed results from users ever since, many find them an annoyance, an invasion into their personal timeline.

Now Twitter are going the whole hog and offering a number of different variations on the promoted theme and at some point soon you will probably be prompted to try their new options when you log into Twitter, so expect to see more content pushed your way, whether you like it or not.

Don’t forget though, there are thousands of very successful accounts on Twitter, with a large follower base, that have never paid for promotion, so how did they manage it? Here’s some tips.

Good content:

OK, it might be obvious, but the real trick to having a successful Twitter account is by consistently writing clever, informative, original and interesting tweets. Packing maximum sparkle into every 140 characters. We can’t help you here, but bear in mind that all the other steps are essentially useless if all you are promoting is an account that tells people you had toast and orange juice for breakfast this morning. By all means tweet links and media, photos and videos now embed nicely on Twitter, but post things that have genuinely interested you, don’t just repost every popular video you see.

Hashtags:

Use popular hashtags every day, jump on bandwagons, try to add something new to existing memes. You can see on the left of your homepage what topics are trending that day, or dig deeper on Twitter and see what is trending locally. Create your own bespoke hashtags and use them consistently, but don’t overdo it, try and think up four or five that relate specifically to your account and something you tweet about regularly.

Following:

Follow other people, but be selective, don’t just follow every Justin Bieber fan that promises to #followback. What you really want are genuine followers who will occasionally read your tweets. When someone does follow you, thank them and consider following them back if they seem like they would be of interest. Build relationships. Having 100 real followers is better than having 20,000 fake ones who never see what you write or retweet you.

Profile:

Your profile is your chance to make a first impression. Have a good photo that says something about what you are about. If you are a plumber, use a photo where you are holding a tap wrench, it’s that simple. Fill in your bio, keep it positive, short and sweet, don’t try to be too funny, you’ll fail, just be informative, most people make a decision on following based on these few words. It helps to have an identifiable theme, or a one sentence tag-line that sums up what you and your business or account is all about.

Timing:

Here’s the real killer. Timing. When you tweet is more important than what you tweet. Some times are just much, much more likely to get you noticed. Take timezones into account, but just before people go to work and just after they go home are good times, so 8am to 9am and 5pm to 6pm, but the less well known one is 1pm. Always make sure you tweet at 1pm, it’s when many people are finishing their lunch break and will check Twitter one last time before getting back to work. 1pm, the golden time for Tweeting, remember it.

Read Also: Google Breaks Space Jump Record

Stick to all of the above and you might, without spending a penny on promotion, find yourself becoming the next big thing on Twitter. Watch out Justin.

Twitter, Followers, More Followers on Twitter, Get Followers on Twitter, Popular on Twitter, Twitter Profile, How to get Followers on Twitter.

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Space Jump Record Broken by Google

Google Exec Breaks Space Jump Record:

A couple of years back, Felix Baumgartner successfully attempted to set the world record for the highest altitude free-fall jump. The world watched in awe as this skydiver from Austria jumped from a balloon at an altitude of 128,100 feet and successfully landed back here on earth.

As you know, world records seldom last long. Alan Eustace, a senior vice president at Google, recently broke Felix Baumgartner’s record, last Friday morning.

Eustace, broke Felix Baumgartner’s two-year-old world record for highest altitude free-fall jump when he parachuted from a balloon close the top of the stratosphere. In doing so he jumped from a height of nearly 26 miles and in the process he also broke the sound barrier! Not bad for a mornings work.

The New York Times had reported that 57-year-old Eustace, ascended to the edge of the stratosphere in a balloon that was filled with 35,000 cubic feet of helium, from an airport strip in Roswell, New Mexico. Eustace then used a small explosive device and hurtled towards our planet at speeds of up to 822 miles per hour. He landed safely on the ground, fifteen minutes later.

Eustace informed the Times “It was amazing…it was beautiful. You could see the darkness of space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen before.”

Eustace reportedly reached a maximum height of 135,890 feet, beating Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner who set the previous record in October of 2012 with a parachute jump from a balloon at an altitude of 128,100 feet.

Read Also: Now Drones are used to study about Whales

Eustace informed the Times that he began planning the jump about three years ago, in secrecy, gathering all of the state-of-the-art technology and equipment that was necessary from a team of professionals.

Although Google offered to help out with the project, Eustace reportedly turned the company down for fear that the jump would become a marketing event.

Google, Space, Jump, Record, Broken, Gadgets, WTF, Tech News, Google Breaks Space Jump record.

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Now Drones are used for Whales

Researchers Using Drones to Study Killer Whales:

People have found all kinds of wonderful uses for drones, not limited to delivering goods, shooting movie scenes, capturing great aerial photography shots, and picking fights with birds of prey. Now, researchers are even using them to study ocean animals in some unprecedented ways.

Using a hexacopter drone, a team consisting of members of the Vancouver Aquarium and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been able to capture some great footage of killer whales in their natural habitat. And to top it off, they’ve been able to do it without bothering the whales in the least bit.

Studying the animals via use of drones has allowed the researchers to have access to information they wouldn’t otherwise have, such as pregnancies and births, overall health information, and much more. Of course the drones have also been able to record the whales at play – a sight which I’ve heard is pretty close to amazing to witness. Using a drone instead of a helicopter has allowed the team to get closer to the whales than ever possible before.

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One can only imagine all of the uses we’ll find for drones in the years to come.

Drones, Gadgets, Whales, Study, Killer, WTF, Cutting Edge, Tech, Marine Life, Fishes, Drones Used for Whales.

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