Top 11 Tech in this August

1 : Samsung Unveils Sexy Curved OLED TV for $8,999

Samsung has officially announced the U.S. pricing and availability for its 55-inch curved OLED TV.

The KN55S9C was previously announced in Asia and expected to sell for around $15,000 in the United States. That’s why we’re pleasantly surprised to see the unit launch with an MSRP of just $8,999. Yes, $9,000 for a TV is still a lot of money, but that’s still 40% less than competitor LG.


So, why do you want a curved OLED TV? The thought is that the curved shape makes it easier for people to see more of the screen in their field of vision. Think about how movie theater and IMAX screens work; the curve lets people from various positions see more of the screen and at more angles.

2 : How the Syrian Electronic Army Attacked SocialFlow

Social media content manager SocialFlow has come forward with details about how its Facebook and Twitter accounts were subject to a major phishing attack.

Earlier this week, the Facebook and Twitter accounts of social media content manager SocialFlow — along with those from other companies such as The New York Post — were subject to a major phishing attack by hacker group Syrian Electronic Army. As a part of an effort to spread awareness, SocialFlow outlined what happened and how it fell short of keeping the platform fully protected.

SocialFlow, whose customers include Pepsi and publishers such as The Economist, noted in a blog post that although user accounts are safe and no data has been compromised, its Twitter handle, Facebook page and website were the targets of a major phishing attack. Several false posts were made from its social pages.

"A number of employees received a phishing email, and that put us on alert," SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson wrote in the post. "'Beware of the phishing email' word went around the office, and our security was put on alert. Unfortunately, an employee working outside the office clicked on the link and entered an email address and password. That person had publishing access to our Twitter account, Facebook account, and website."

An email from what seemed like a known sender was sent to employees with the title "Article" and a link that appeared to go to a popular news site.

"It was clever because the subdirectory even went to /2013/08/13/tech/social/index.html," Anderson continued. "That directory structure looks very clearly like an article that we would share among our staff. Of course the known sender didn’t really send the email — the reply address was forged, which is a pretty easy trick."

3 : Elon Musk Reveals Hyperloop Transport System Alpha Design

Entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiled alpha design plans Monday for his highly-anticipated Hyperloop high-speed transportation system.



As expected at around 4:30 p.m ET on Monday, the alpha designs went live on Musk's Tesla Motors website.

Musk first told Bloomberg Businessweek Monday that the solar-powered Hyperloop system will transport people in aluminum pods and cars at speeds up to 800 mph. Businessweek reported the tubes would be mounted on columns 50 to 100 yards apart.

"The Hyperloop (or something similar) is, in my opinion, the right solution for the specific case of high traffic city pairs that are less than about 1500 km or 900 miles apart," Musk wrote in the blog post.

4 : Windows 8.1 Update Ready for Download on Oct. 17

On the heels of rumors that Windows 8.1 is scheduled for an October arrival, the company confirmed on Wednesday the date: Oct. 17.

The free update — for both Windows 8 and Windows RT — will be available via the Windows Start Screen through the Windows store on existing devices. It will be available at retail stores and on new devices starting on that date by market.

"Windows 8.1 brings many improvements in areas like personalization, Internet Explorer 11, search which is powered by Bing, built-in apps including a few new ones, an improved Windows Store experience, and cloud connectivity with SkyDrive (and much more) that people will enjoy," Brandon LeBlanc, senior marketing communications manager at Microsoft, wrote on the company's official blog.

Windows 8.1 made its public preview on June 26 at the BUILD developer conference in San Francisco and can still be accessed now by clicking here.

A company spokesperson told Mashable at the time that the update would give Windows 8 the push it needs to better compete against rivals.

5 : Personal Jetpack Awarded Flight Permit

The New Zealand developers of a personalized jetpack said Tuesday that aviation regulators have issued the device with a flying permit, allowing for manned test flights. Martin Aircraft Chief Executive Peter Coker said the certification was a significant milestone in the development of the jetpack, which the company hopes to begin selling next year.

"For us it's a very important step because it moves it out of what I call a dream into something which I believe we're now in a position to commercialize and take forward very quickly," Coker told AFP.

The jetpack is the brainchild of inventor Glenn Martin, who began working on it in his Christchurch garage more than 30 years ago. Inspired by childhood television shows such as Thunderbirds and Lost in Space, Martin set out in the early 1980s to create a jetpack suitable for everyday use by ordinary people with no specialist pilot training. His jetpack consists of a pair of cylinders containing propulsion fans attached to a free-standing carbon-fiber frame.

The pilot backs into the frame, straps himself in and controls the wingless jetpack with two joysticks. While the jetpack's concept is simple enough — TIME Magazine likened its design to two enormous leaf blowers welded together — fine-tuning it into an aircraft that is safe and easy to use has been a lengthy process. Coker said the latest prototype, the P12, incorporated huge design improvements over earlier versions.

"Changing the position of the jetpack's ducts has resulted in a quantum leap in performance over the previous prototype, especially in terms of the aircraft's maneuverability," he said.

Coker said a specialized version of the jetpack designed for the military and ""first responder" emergency crews such as firefighters should be ready for delivery by mid-2014. A simpler model aimed at the general public is expected to be on the market in 2015.

The price of your own personal flying machine is estimated at $150,000 to $250,000, although Coker said the cost was likely to come down over time. It comes with a rocket-propelled parachute if anything goes wrong.

In May 2011, a remote control Martin jetpack carrying a dummy pilot soared 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) above the South Island's Canterbury Plains as its creator watched anxiously from a helicopter hovering nearby. The New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority said the jetpack had now been issued with an experimental flight permit for development test flying, which allows someone to pilot the aircraft.

It said the test flights would be subject to strict safety requirements, with flights not allowed any higher than 20 feet (six meters) above the ground, or 25 feet above water. The flights are also limited to test areas over uninhabited land.

6 : Report: Samsung's Smart Watch Coming Sept. 4

Samsung's rumored smart watch, the Galaxy Gear, is coming next month, according to a report.

The device, which lets you make phone calls, send emails and surf the web, will be unveiled on Sept. 4, two days before the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, according to Bloomberg. This means the device would be announced less than a week before Apple's expected Sept. 10 iPhone unveiling.

See also: Smart Watch Turns Your Wrist Into a Phone

Apple has not confirmed that timing or even that such an event is taking place. The company is expected to announce lower-cost iPhone (likely called the iPhone 5C) and an upgrade to the iPhone 5 (called the iPhone 5S), according to various unconfirmed reports. Apple is also rumored to be working on its own smart watch.

Samsung reps could not be reached for comment on the Bloomberg report. The article does not outline the price of the device or a timeline for availability. Details about technical specs were also scant, though the article does state that the watch would not have a flexible display.

7 : Google Search Will Pull Info From Your Email for Smarter Results

Google is ramping up its search functionality to make it easier to pull up what you're looking for, from details about your flight's status and upcoming dinner reservations to tracking information on packages.

For example, by typing "What's my flight status?" into Google search, the site will sift through the data in your email, Google Calender and Google+, and then match it against real-time information about your flight. You can also ask it to show you pictures you've taken of anything from sunsets to locations and will then search all of your Google-related accounts to present them to you.

The updates will roll out in the next few days to all U.S. and English-speaking users. It will come to desktop Google search, as well as tablet and smartphones and will be compatible with Google Voice so you can ask your mobile device the same question.

The move is an extension of what Google has offered via Google Now for more than a year.

"This information is just for you—secure, via encrypted connection, and visible only to you when you're signed in to Google," the company wrote in a blog post. "Likewise, you can also control whether you want the service on or off."

An icon at the top of the search results page can be turned off and to block the feature permanently, the "private results" section in settings will do the trick.

8 : Google and Microsoft Spar Again Over YouTube Windows App

Redmond, Wash., and Mountain View, Calif., are at it again, leaving Windows Phone users inconvenienced.

Just two days after a new YouTube app for the Windows Phone debuted, Google has blocked the app — again. Google, which owns YouTube, confirmed to Mashable in a statement that it has disabled the app over grievances with a terms of service violation:

We’re committed to providing users and creators with a great and consistent YouTube experience across devices, and we’ve been working with Microsoft to build a fully featured YouTube for Windows Phone app, based on HTML5. Unfortunately, Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our Terms of Service. It has been disabled. We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines.

A Microsoft spokesperson also told Mashable the app has been blocked but did not elaborate: “Google is blocking our updated YouTube app for Windows Phone. We are working with them to resolve the issue.”

This is not the first time this has happened. Earlier this year, Google and Microsoft bickered over Microsoft failing to include advertising on the YouTube app for Windows Phones. Google then demanded that Microsoft take YouTube off the Windows Phone OS because of its lack of ads. The tech giants eventually made amends in May, and Microsoft released its latest app Tuesday.

Thursday's new inconvenience appeared to baffle and irritate some Windows Phone users: customer reviews on the app's page in the Windows Phone store clearly showed customer frustrations. "Pathetic," said user Matthew. "Not working after last update," user Sara said. "Waited ages for this app and it doesn't work ... Thanks Microsoft. It just says 'Something went wrong ... We don't know what,'" said user Stanley.

9 : New Mashable Android App Predicts What's Going Viral

We're proud to announce that we're launching a new Mashable app for Android in a partnership with Samsung. The app will premiere exclusively for select Samsung Galaxy devices, including the Galaxy S4, Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II and Galaxy Tab 3 devices, before full public release next week.

Above All, We Listened to You

We know you like our responsive, adaptive website (thanks again for the massive amount of emails and tweets!), so we've implemented that design strategy within the app. It's a beautiful design that responsively adapts to your device's size, from a phone to a mini to an oversized tablet, so you can be assured the app will look great on whatever you're carrying.

And we've listened to what you told us were some of your favorite features. For instance, when you finish reading an article, the homepage is dynamically stitched in below the article. You don't need to keep clicking on the navigation to get around the app — it just knows where you'll want to go next and opens up a path for you. We know you expect this from us, and that's what we aimed to deliver.

Predicting What's Going Viral

We also listened to all of you who emailed, IMed, commented, pug-bombed via Hubot on Hipchat, and otherwise messaged us about adding our homegrown viral prediction technology, which we call Mashable Velocity (first debuted in Mashable Velocity for Google Glass), into the Android app. So we did that.

When our Mashable Velocity algorithm predicts a story is about to go viral, we'll send an Android notification to all the folks who have installed the app. But we have to warn you, it's pretty addicting. Just promise us that you'll read the one story you're notified about, and then you'll actually get back to work.

Backgrounder: What Is Mashable Velocity?

Back in December, when we launched the new Mashable, we released a site that was built by our own hands on top of a homegrown algorithm called Velocity. Velocity scours the social web, collecting lots and lots of data around how people engage with published articles. It then pulls all of that data back to Mashable, dumps it into our own predictive engine, and forecasts which articles are about to go viral.

We dogfood Velocity: Mashable's homepage and section pages are driven by it. Velocity decides the stories to promote and in which areas of the page to display them (this process is overseen by a human editor, of course, but Velocity greatly reduces the amount of work that a human has to do).

In much the same way that Velocity helps Mashable's human editors know what's hot on the site, our new Mashable Android app (and our Mashable Velocity for Google Glass app) alert you just before a Mashable story goes viral. With it — and an Android device or a pair of Google Glasses — you know what everyone is talking about on the social web, before they're talking about it.

10 : 43% of Global Web Surfers Choose Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the world's most popular Internet browser, claiming 43% of the global market.

Only 36% of Internet users in North America are Chrome users, one of the world's lowest rates. Oceania is the only continent where an even smaller percentage of users opt for Chrome.

See also: 8 Google Chrome Extensions to Boost Your Productivity

Statista's chart below examines web browser usage across the globe. Following Chrome, the world's leading browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

11 : Yahoo Shuts Down Its Email Service In China

ahoo’s email service in China has shut down, with a note on its log-in page asking users to transfer their accounts to Alibaba’s Alimail. The closure of Yahoo China email was announced on April 18 and is part of its gradual ceasing of services in China since acquiring a stake in Alibaba, one of the country’s largest Internet companies, in 2005.

In January, for example, Yahoo China shutdown its Chinese music service, citing an “adjustment in our product strategy.” A notice on Yahoo China email’s site says that users with the suffixes @yahoo.com.cn and @yahoo.cn can register and transfer their data to a new Alimail account, where they will continue to receive emails send to their Yahoo addresses until December 31, 2014.

The Sunnyvale-based company paid $1 billion for a 40% stake in Alibaba in 2005. Since then, Alibaba has grown into the backbone of China’s burgeoning e-commerce market. In September, Alibaba closed an initial repurchase of its shares from Yahoo for $7.6 billion. Yahoo’s remaining 24% stake in the Chinese company, which is expected to go public within the next two years, is estimated to be worth about $14 billion.

The Sunnyvale-based company isn’t relying solely on its investment in Alibaba, however, to ensure a footprint in China. Yahoo recently acquired Ztelic, a Beijing-based startup that focuses on social-network data. Eight Ztelic developers and engineers joined Yahoo’s research and development team in Beijing, while Ztelic founder (and returning Yahoo) Hao Zheng was slated for a “critical leadership role in our Beijing Global R&D Center,” a Yahoo spokeswoman told us.