Motorola's Made-in-America Moto X Smartphone to Be Announced Today

Motorola's Moto X hasn't exactly been the company's best-kept secret, but later today the official details of the made-in-America smartphone will be released.

The much-hyped Android phone from the Google-owned company is said to have a few differentiating features, many of which the company is hoping can give it back some edge against smartphone giants Apple and Samsung.

Here's what we know so far.

This much Motorola has said. The company's CEO, Dennis Woodside, announced in June that the Moto X would be made at a new 500,000-square-foot production facility in Fort Worth, Texas. More than 2,200 employees have already begun to make the smartphone, which will be assembled and will ship right from the factory.

It is highly customizable with different colors.

Being close to home is going to allow Motorola to make the Moto X a highly personalized device, ABC News first reported last month.

Through a website, buyers will be able to select from a palette of different colors, sources told ABC News. One color can be used for the back case and another can be selected for the trim of the phone. Users will also be able to engrave a name or message on the back cover, as well as upload a personal photo through the site to be used as the wallpaper on the phone's screen. Various reports say the phone has a larger 4.7-inch display.

It has advanced software features.

Similar to the phones just released by Motorola for Verizon, the Moto X is said to always be waiting for your command and will leverage the same "OK Google Now" commands as the Droid Ultra. With the Ultra, similar to how you navigate Google Glass, you can say "OK Google Now" and the phone will be woken up. Say "OK Google Now Call John" and it will dial up John's number.

Given that the phone will be the first that the company has worked on from start to finish since being acquired by Google in August 2011, the integration with Google's services makes sense.

There are some other tricks, too. Our sources said that instead of having to fumble for the camera icon or button, you will be able to flick the phone to launch the camera faster. Sources who were testing the phone said it was running Android 4.2.2. Google, however, released Android 4.3 last week.

It is coming to the major U.S. carriers.

Pricing and availability are still the two big missing pieces, but Motorola has said that it will be available at some of the largest carriers in the nation. Given that the launch is happening today, we assume it will be available soon.

# Motorola, #Moto X
Source: ABC News

Powerball jackpot climbs to $290M

The Powerball jackpot keeps growing.

It's now up to $290 million with a cash option of $168.4 million after no tickets sold for Wednesday's drawing matched all the winning numbers, according to the Powerball website.

The winning numbers are: 8, 24, 39, 49 and 59. The Powerball drawn was 5.

Tickets that matched five numbers but not the Powerball were bought in each of California, Connecticut, Florida, New York, Oregon, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

The tickets purchased in Oregon and Oklahoma are worth $2 million apiece since the lucky player in each of those states paid an extra $1 and chose the Powerplay option. The others won $1 million each before taxes.

The best anyone in New Jersey did was four numbers and the Powerball — a $10,000 prize.

Wednesday marked the 11th consecutive drawing without a jackpot winner.

#Powerball jackpot, #lottery
Source:http://www.nj.com

Riley Cooper vows apology to black teammates

Riley Thomas Cooper is an American football wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League. He played college football and college baseball for the University of Florida.

Embarrassed Eagles receiver Riley Cooper stood fittingly with his back to a wall outside the team's training complex press room Wednesday night, apologizing for a racial epithet used after a confrontation with an African American security guard working a June 8 Kenny Chesney concert.

The six-minute, 45-second apology -- which followed a Twitter apology -- was only the beginning for Cooper, who was fined an undisclosed amount by the team and now awaits word on whether the NFL will tack on more discipline.

The receiver said he intended to apologize later to his teammates, many of whom are African American, following a 7 p.m. walk-through practice.

"It's going to be very difficult for me. I'm going to tell them, 'I'm extremely sorry,' tell them exactly what I'm telling you guys. There was a confrontation and I handled it extremely, extremely poorly,'' Cooper said to 25 reporters and six local television cameras. "This is kind of the lowest of lows. This isn't the type of person I want to be portrayed as. This isn't the type of person that I am.

"I know no one in Philadelphia is happy with me right now. I accept that. I just hope they see the true me. And accept my apology.''

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello declined to say if the league would take further discipline, adding, "The NFL stands for diversity and inclusion. Comments like this are wrong, offensive, and unacceptable."

In a video that has gone viral, Cooper said, "I will jump that fence and fight every (N-word) here, bro."

He was asked if he had too much to drink that night, when he also was caught on video in a heated argument.

"I was drinking,'' he said. "But that is no excuse for what I said and what I did. I'm willing to accept any consequences.''

Cooper was asked how he let a racial slur, shown on CrossingBroad.com, come out of his mouth?

"I shouldn't have,'' Cooper said. "I'm disgusted. And I'm sorry. That's not the type of person I am. I wasn't raised that way. I have a great mom and dad at home. And they're extremely, extremely disappointed in me. They are disgusted with my actions."

Cooper's profane epithet was the first test of first-year coach Chip Kelly's crisis management.

"He said, 'Go out and face this and tell them exactly what you just told me, how sorry you are for what you said,''' Cooper said.

The fourth-year receiver, who is the team's No. 2 receiver opposite DeSean Jackson following last weekend's season-ending knee injury suffered by Jeremy Maclin, said he met with owner Jeffrey Lurie, general manager Howie Roseman and Kelly.

Cooper declined to reveal the amount he was fined, but said the punishment was a joint decision by the three.

"It was a good amount of money, but that's really not important,'' he said. "The situation should not have been dealt with the way I dealt with it.''

Laurie said in a statement: "We are shocked and appalled by Riley Cooper's words. This sort of behavior or attitude from anyone has no role in a civil society. He has accepted responsibility for his words and his actions. He has been fined for this incident."

Cooper was asked if he expects to be a marked man in the league now.

"I haven't thought that far ahead,'' he said. "I just know how sorry I am right now.''

Curiously, Marcus Vick, brother of Eagles quarterback Michael Vick, placed a $1,000 bounty on Cooper via Twitter on Wednesday night, offering the money to any safety who laid a good lick on the receiver. Later, after being criticized by his brother, Marcus Vick deleted the tweet.

If there is someone Cooper can look to for a road back, it is former NFL quarterback Kerry Collins, who used a racial slur in jest after a night out drinking with black teammates on the Carolina Panthers in the late 1990s before the New York Giants threw Collins a lifeline and he made the most of it, leading the team to the Super Bowl in the 2000 season.

Before that, Collins was arrested for drunken driving and was accused by Carolina Panthers teammates of quitting on his team.

"I've been called a racist, a drunk and a quitter. Other than that, I'm fine,'' Collins said at the time.

After he apologized once more, Cooper left to say he was sorry to those he must convince of his contrition – his teammates.

"Most of the ones that know me, they know what kind of person I am,'' he said.

#Riley Cooper,
source: http://www.usatoday.com

'The Bachelorette' Desiree Hartsock blindsided by heartbreak in season finale first installment

The shocking episode ended with the 27-year-old bridal stylist crying, but not tears of joy.

This season of "The Bachelorette" is ending in a plot twist that fans of the sensational series certainly didn't see coming.

The first part of the two-week finale on Monday night left Bachelorette Desiree Hartsock in tears but not tears of joy.

The 27-year-old bridal stylist took her final three potential suitors on overnight dates to beautiful Antigua, where she was expecting to spend time making her final decisions about which man she'd hopefully spend the rest of her life with.

While enjoying dates with Brooks, Chris and Drew, Hartsock was becoming more and more certain that Brooks, the 28-year-old Salt Lake City native, is "the one."

“Even though I’m falling in love with the other guys, I still have deeper feelings for Brooks,” she said. “I know that I am falling in love with him."

However in a shocking reveal, fans learned that Brooks didn’t feel the same way. What ensued may just be the biggest dump in "Bachelorette" history.

#Daily News, #The Bachelorette
Source: Daily News

J.J. Cale, Musician and Songwriter Dies

J. J. Cale, a musician and songwriter whose blues-inflected rock influenced some of the genre’s biggest names and whose songs were recorded by Eric Clapton and Johnny Cash among others, died on Friday in La Jolla, Calif. He was 74.

Mr. Cale suffered a heart attack and died at Scripps Memorial Hospital around 8 p.m. on Friday evening, a statement posted on his Web site said.

He is best known as the writer of “Cocaine” and “After Midnight,” songs made famous when they were recorded by his collaborator, Eric Clapton.

A multi-instrumentalist, Mr. Cale often played all of the parts on his albums, also recording and mixing them himself. He is also credited as one of the architects of the 1970s Tulsa sound, a blend of rockabilly, blues, country and rock that came to influence Neil Young and Bryan Ferry, among others. He won a Grammy Award in 2007 for an album with Mr. Clapton.

“Basically, I’m just a guitar player that figured out I wasn’t ever gonna be able to buy dinner with my guitar playing,” Mr. Cale told an interviewer for his official biography. “So I got into songwriting, which is a little more profitable business.”

John Weldon Cale was born in Oklahoma in 1938. He recorded “After Midnight” in the mid-1960s, according to the biography, but had retreated to his native Tulsa and “given up on the business part of the record business” by the time Mr. Clapton covered it in 1970. He heard it on the radio that year, he told NPR, “and I went, ‘Oh, boy, I’m a songwriter now. I’m not an engineer or an elevator operator.' ”

Mr. Cale released an album, “Naturally,” in 1972, to capitalize on that success, and continued to tour and release new music until 2009. But he declined to put his image on any of his covers and kept his vocals low amid the instruments on his recordings. He developed a reputation as a private figure and a musician’s musician while his songs were covered by Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band, Deep Purple and Tom Petty, among others.

“I’d like to have the fortune,” he said in his biography, “but I don’t care too much about the fame.”

#J.J. Cale

Source: www.nytimes.com

Radio personality Kidd Kraddick dies in New Orleans

Kidd Kraddick, the likable Dallas radio personality whose popularity expanded nationwide when his morning show was syndicated, died on Saturday at the age of 53.

He passed away in New Orleans at a fundraising event for his Kidd's Kids charity organization at Timberlane County Club in Gretna, Louisiana.

Local law enforcement confirmed that Kraddick was taken to West Jefferson Medical Center in New Orleans on Saturday.

A staple of North Texas radio since 1984, he broadcast his nationally syndicated "Kidd Kraddick in the Morning" radio show from a studio at Las Colinas. It aired locally on KISS-FM 106.1.

"All of us at KISS-FM, Clear Channel Dallas, YEA Networks and the Kidd Kraddick in the Morning crew are heartbroken over the loss of our dear friend and leader," a statement from Clear Channel Dallas said late Saturday night. "He died doing what he loved, and his final day was spent selflessly focused on those special children that meant the world to him."

Kraddick was 53. The cause of his death was not released. Clear Channel said that information will be made available "at the appropriate time."

Kraddick's family issued a brief statement asking that their privacy be respected in their mourning period.

KISS-FM altered its usual format late Saturday to celebrate Kraddick's life by playing music and taking calls from listeners.

"I can't believe this is actually happening," one caller said. "He's a part of everybody's family; he makes people laugh."

In a bitterly ironic twist, Kraddick did a radio segment just last week on "what he would say to each member of the show in his final moments on earth" as a comedy bit.

   #Kidd Kraddick

 Source: www.wfaa.com

Chromecast Is a Cord Cutter’s Dream for $35

The Chromecast's main purpose is to reduce the amount of time between wanting to watch a video on Netflix or YouTube and actually doing it.

Every night, it’s the same situation. My wife and I are on the couch, TV off, immersed in our respective computing devices, when she breaks the silence: “Let’s watch something.”

From there, it’s a process. I look for the Xbox 360 controller and twiddle my thumbs while it boots, or if it’s out of reach, maybe I get up and turn on our media PC instead. I return to my comfy seat and fumble with one remote or another, none of them really ideal for shuffling through vast menus of video content. By the time we’re actually watching something, 10 minutes have passed.

This is the life of a cord cutter. We save insane amounts of money every month by not subscribing to cable TV, but the alternative of watching Internet video sometimes feels like a chore. I’m really hoping Chromecast is the solution.

Chromecast is a $35 dongle that plugs into an HDMI slot on your television, and its main purpose is to reduce the amount of time between wanting to watch a video on Netflix or YouTube and actually doing it.

The big assumption with Chromecast is that when you’re on the couch, you already have a phone or tablet in your hands. Instead of reaching for a remote, all you have to do is open your Netflix or YouTube app, find the video you want to watch, and press a little “Cast” button to send the video to your television.

Chromecast is supposed to handle the rest. Over Wi-Fi, your phone tells the dongle what to watch. The dongle automatically turns on your television, switches to the appropriate input and begins streaming the video you’ve chosen.

It’s a subtle but important distinction from AirPlay, the method Apple uses to beam videos to an Apple TV. With AirPlay, the video gets streamed directly from your iOS device or Mac. Chromecast streams straight from the Internet; your phone or tablet merely sends the instructions to the dongle. Because the phone or tablet isn’t actively sending data the entire time with Chromecast, you’re not wasting battery life, and you’re free to do other things on your phone or tablet while the video plays on your TV.

Chromecast has another big advantage: It supports Android as well as iOS devices. I bounce between both platforms, so the fact that AirPlay only works with Apple products was the main thing holding me back from Apple TV.

In my experience, Chromecast isn’t quite as magical as Google makes it seem. While setting up the device, I got an error message saying I needed to tinker with my router settings to get the Wi-Fi connection working. But then I just tried to connect again, and everything worked.

One other nitpick: The dongle itself connects through HDMI, but it’s powered by USB, and not all TVs have powered USB jacks on them. If your TV has a “service” USB port, it won’t work. The only other option is to plug the dongle into a wall outlet, which detracts from its overall slickness.

I also had to adjust my television’s settings to get Chromecast to automatically turn on my TV and switch inputs. As GigaOM’s Janko Roettgers explains, Chromecast uses a little-known technology called HDMI-CEC to control your television, but every TV maker refers to this technology differently. To get the controls working on my Sharp TV, I had to find the “Aquos Link” menu and toggle the setting for “Auto Power On.”

After getting those issues straightened out, Chromecast worked flawlessly. When you open Netflix or YouTube on an iOS or Android device, the app recognizes that there’s a Chromecast in the house, and presents the option to send videos to your television. You can start controlling Chromecast playback on one phone, then switch to another and pick up the controls from there.

Depending on your situation, this may not be ideal. Letting any phone or tablet control Chromecast could lead to a power struggle in your living room. And if you have a lot of people over, choosing a video on your phone might not be as fun as letting everyone see their options on the big screen. But even then, Chromecast could still be great for those moments when you suddenly want to share a YouTube video with everyone in the room.

The bigger drawback for Chromecast is that it only works with a handful of apps: YouTube, Netflix, Google Play Music and Google Play Video. Pandora support is coming soon, and other developers are free to add Chromecast support to their apps, but it’s too early to assume that the Chromecast ecosystem is going to boom.

Chromecast also lets you send any browser tab to the big screen from Chrome on a Windows PC, Mac or Chromebook. But right now, Google’s calling this a beta feature, and it’s easy to see why. In my experience on both a Chromebook and a powerful Windows desktop, streaming video regularly fell out of sync with the audio. And unlike the video streaming from a phone or tablet, you must leave the current tab open for it to stream on the television. That puts a strain on your computer’s battery life and prevents you from doing other things at the same time. The Chrome-based streaming is a fine feature for viewing online photos or other static web pages, but I would not recommend getting a Chromecast for the sole purpose of sending video from a laptop to your television.

Those issues haven’t prevented me from buying a Chromecast for myself. (The one I’m using now is on loan from Google.) Netflix streaming alone accounts for the vast majority of my video-watching at home, and $35 is well worth the convenience of being able to select and watch videos faster than I have before. If more developers end up supporting Chromecast, it’ll just be icing.

On that note, some critics see the lack of a dedicated remote and TV interface as a problem for Chromecast. I see it as an opportunity. It allows app developers to support Chromecast without the extra work of creating separate television apps, which they largely haven’t done for the perpetually-flailing Google TV. And as someone who gave up clunky cable remotes a long time ago, I’m ready for those button-laden monstrosities to be replaced by phones and tablets. Chromecast is the first device that envisions the touch screen as your primary remote control. It probably won’t be the last.

Source: http://techland.time.com