ThumbsUp Labs believes that our smartphone screens are too messy -- we have to wade through pages of apps to find just the right tool at a given moment. The company hopes to clean things up by releasing the private beta of Aviate, an Android launcher that builds context-aware home screens and ...
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/UPEv787T03A/LONDON - British boy band One Direction, Katy Perry and Robin Thicke are among the latest music stars set to perform on the U.K. version of The X Factor.
Executive producer Mark Sidaway announced on Twitter Tuesday that One Direction would appear on one of the live episodes of the ITV music competition show later this season. He didn't provide a specific date.
Photos: Fully Exposed: A Brief History of Nudity in Music Videos
This coming weekend, Perry will perform on the Simon Cowell-created show to promote her new album, Prism, which is being released in the U.K. next week. She will be joined by "Blurred Lines" singer Thicke.
Previously announced music stars set for appearances on upcoming episodes of The X Factor include Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and last year’s winner James Arthur.
The X Factor U.K. entered its live shows stage this past weekend with performances from Cher and Ellie Goulding.
The show drew the biggest TV audience in the U.K. this Sunday, ahead of hit costume drama Downton Abbey, which also airs on ITV.
E-mail: Georg.Szalai@THR.com
Twitter: @georgszalai
Sony's Captain Phillips earned $600,000 as it began rolling out in theaters Thursday night, boosting chances that the movie will hit $20 million in its debut.
Directed by Paul Greengrass and starring Tom Hanks, the Somali pirate drama hopes for a berth in this year's awards race. The critically acclaimed film cost $55 million to produce.
Captain Phillips outpaced the $450,000 earned Thursday night by Lee Daniels' The Butler, which had a $24.6 million opening in August. However, with Gravity still taking up plenty of oxygen, Sony believes Captain Phillips will instead match the $19.5 million opening of Argo in October 2012.
EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS: On Board With 'Captain Phillips' Stars Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi
Warner Bros.' Gravity, enjoying record-breaking weekday business, is expected to top the North American box office in its second weekend with a gross north of $28 million. Alfonso Cuaron's space epic, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, will cross the $80 million mark domestically sometime on Friday.
Robert Rodriguez' Machete Kills took in $200,000 Thursday night. The exploitation action film is expected to earn $8 million in its domestic opening.
Which F1 driver was the best performer during the Japanese Grand Prix weekend?
Review how each driver got on below and vote for who impressed you the most during the last race weekend.
Mark Webber – Webber hasn’t always been close enough to Vettel this year to take advantage when his team mate has a problem but he was at Suzuka and pushed his team mate hard for the victory. Said he was “surprised” to be switched to a three-stop strategy[1] but was able to use his superior speed in the final stint to pass Grosjean. Had he done so more quickly he could have gone after his team mate.
Fernando Alonso – Held his hands up after being beaten by Massa in qualifying and admitted he hadn’t been quick enough[2]. His race pace was better but he spent the first stint stuck behind Massa. He took advantage of traffic in the second stint to get past Massa, then later demoted Hulkenberg when the Sauber driver’s tyres began to drop off. That gave him fourth place, and he felt no more was possible under the circumstances[3].
Felipe Massa – Would Massa “drive for himself”, as he told Brazilian media after being dropped by Ferrari, or would he “definitely help” his team mate[4] as Luca di Montezemolo insisted? That was answered in the first stint when Massa repeatedly ignored Ferrari’s instructions to let Alonso through, delivered through the radio code “Multifunction strategy A”. Hulkenberg took advantage of the situation to jump both Ferraris, then Alonso finally found a way past his team mate, after which Massa picked up a penalty for speeding in the pits and fell to tenth.
Jenson Button – Set the same time to within a tenth of a second on three separate occasions in qualifying and felt he’d wrung all there was from the MP4-28. Driving to the grid he chose to reduce the front wing angle on the car but quickly regretted the decision, suffering understeer which wasn’t cured until the last stint. Held off Massa for ninth.
Sergio Perez – Crashed at Spoon during second practice, which he said was his mistake as he’d touched the artificial grass on entry to the corner. Narrowly missed Q3 but started well, only to lose time when Rosberg came out of the pits immediately in front of him. Like Button he had a slow pit stop as well. His left-rear tyre was punctured in slight contact with Rosberg, which killed his chances of scoring points.
Romain Grosjean – Surely his best F1 performance to date with a solid qualifying effort followed by an outrageous start from which he emerged as an unlikely threat to Red Bull. Led comfortably for almost half of the race and did well to hold off Webber as long as he did before taking another podium finish.
Nico Rosberg – An unsafe release from the pits dropped him back into the pack where he ended up scrapping with Perez. Like his team mate in Korea he spent the latter part of the race stuck behind a Sauber, Gutierrez limiting him to eighth.
Lewis Hamilton – The merest touch of his right-rear tyre against Vettel’s front wing was enough to give him a puncture as he dived between the Red Bulls off the line. From looking likely to take second at the start he was soon out of the race.
Esteban Gutierrez – Points looked unlikely when he lined up 14th on the grid but a superb start, gaining five places, brought him into contention. Gave away a position to Raikkonen though it was one he was always going to struggle to keep.
Paul di Resta – Ended his strong of retirements and took 11th, unable to resist Button in the latter part of the race. Still he was happy with the improved balance of the Force India.
Adrian Sutil – A crash in final practice forced him to change his gearbox, and after failing to escape Q1 he started last. Up to 16th by lap one, he gained two more places by the end of the race despite being passed by both Toro Rossos in one lap later on.
Pastor Maldonado – Went off twice in practice, but the first spin in Q1 was due to a wheel which hadn’t been attached properly and fell off[5]. The stand-out moment of Maldonado’s race was his desperate lunge down the inside of Bottas on his final lap, signalling his eagerness not to finish behind his team mate.
Valtteri Bottas – Impressively out-qualified Maldonado on his first race at a real drivers’ circuit. But his tyres went off badly in the final stint, losing four places in the last three laps.
Daniel Ricciardo – Tried to make an alternative strategy work, starting on the hard tyres. But he became the latest driver to be penalised for completing a pass by going off the track on the outside of the corner, which he was deeply unimpressed with[7]. His drive-through penalty confined him to 13th place.
Charles Pic – Already carrying a ten-place penalty into the race weekend, Pic committed much the same infraction he had in Korea – passing a red light without stopping – and earned an unprecedented drive-through penalty which was declared before the race had begun[8]. Despite that he was quick enough to beat the sole surviving Marussia home.
Giedo van der Garde – Collided with Bianchi at the start, putting both out. “I was squeezed between both the Marussia cars and had nowhere to go,” he said. “I lost my front wing in contact with Bianchi and then the car went straight off and into the wall.”
Jules Bianchi – Hit the barrier at Degner 2 in first practice when his arm got caught against the side of the cockpit. Unfortunately that ruled him out of second practice as well[9]. Beaten in a straight fight by his team mate in qualifying for the first time, he was taken out on lap one of the race. “As I turned into the first corner on the opening lap, van der Garde hit my rear wing which pushed me off track and into the gravel.” A wasted weekend in which he completed just 32 laps, most of which in Saturday’s hour of practice.
Max Chilton – Out-qualified Bianchi on merit for the first time the year. But despite Pic having a drive-through penalty he was caught and passed by the Marussia seven laps from home after his tyres began to go off.
Which driver do you think did the best job this weekend?
Cast your vote below and explain your choice in the comments.
Who was the best driver of the 2013 Japanese Grand Prix weekend?
Total Voters: 372
An F1 Fanatic account is required in order to vote. If you do not have one, register an account here[10] or read more about registering here[11].
Images © Red Bull/Getty, Lotus/LAT, Sauber
"This is not normal" is one of those phrases that stands out in part because it's true, and in part because much of the political world pretends it isn't true.
For example, over the summer, Peggy Noonan, a prominent Republican pundit, scoffed at the "hype" from the media about "a unique and epic level of partisan animus." On the debt ceiling, Republicans have pushed the spectacularly untrue line that "both sides" have held this particular hostage. Even after congressional Republicans shut down the government two weeks ago, it was widely characterized as something that just happens from time to time.
The tech world doesn’t want people working from home. Or so it seems.
Hewlett Packard, which had previously encouraged many employees to work from home, is now nudging them back into the office. And after Yahoo and Best Buy made moves to discourage working from home, the tech press and pundits are convinced they’ve spotted a bona fide trend.
But what’s going on here is far more nuanced than a full-scale retreat from remote work — and much more encouraging for home workers. Ubiquitous broadband and cloud computing helped usher in the euphoric first wave of 21st century work-from-home arrangements, in which employers salivated over real estate cost savings and workers fantasized about nuking commutes and pointless meetings. Now, we’re in the second wave, a reckoning with the realities of telecommuting that could make the practice more productive for companies and more satisfying for employees, and thus more popular and available.
Take HP. Yes, the company is encouraging a return to the office, writing in a memo obtained by All Things D that “HP needs all hands on deck…to build a stronger culture of engagement and collaboration.”
But consider the context: Just a few years ago, the company was all but shoving some employees out of the offices — by HP’s own admission. To cut HP’s real estate holdings and reduce costs, former CEO Mark Hurd cut back on physical space, installed flexible office technology and encouraged telecommuting. Expecting a 70-year-old company with a longstanding office culture to maintain its collaborative strengths as its workers were suddenly sent home and set adrift amid spending cuts was not a viable strategy. So HP is, as it explained to the New York Times, making space for people who want to come back into the office, while leaving the old work-from-home policies firmly in place.
Yahoo and Best Buy have also bent over backwards to make it clear that their own moves to get people back into the office are attempts to create work arrangements that function better over the long term. Under a series of short-term, underperfoming CEOs, Yahoo had reportedly seen its work-from-home system devolve into an escape from dysfunction at the office, with some employees avoiding doing any work at all or even launching their own startups.
CEO Marrissa Mayer has said that by the time she arrived on the scene, employees complained that work-from-home arrangements kept teams from gelling, so workers were recalled to headquarters. But she left the door open for bringing back remote work once the company is back on its feet, saying remote work is “not right for us — right now.”
It’s possible to build a culture of remote work that allows employees to be more focused, commute hours to be made productive, and managers to clearly shape and see the results. But that requires a healthfully focused company and certain degrees of savvy, engagement, and practice on the part of both managers and workers. Too often, the potential of working from home is spoiled by broader dysfunction, under-engaged managers or employees who lose their motivation, perhaps out of habit, once they’re outside the walls of headquarters. For all its potential benefits, telecommuting is a tough problem involving technical, cultural, and tactical challenges. What’s surprising isn’t how often it fails, but that people are still trying — hard — to make it work.
The new NBA season hasn’t even started and rookie Otto Porter is already a big hit with Washington Wizards fans after an act of kindness to a homeless man.
The 20-year-old is poised to become a millionaire after being chosen third overall in the league’s draft earlier this year.
But the 6ft 8in small forward showed his feet are firmly on the ground when he bought some food and drink for a man living on the streets before sitting down with him and enjoying a chat.
Local resident Michael Stein recognised Porter going into a local sandwich shop and said: ‘He soon exited with his sandwich and drink but also with a sandwich, a bag of chips and a drink for the homeless man.
‘Mr. Porter then sat down next to the man, and they both enjoyed their sandwiches while making small talk.
‘It was a wonderful thing to watch. This pure act of kindness, when no one was paying any attention, demonstrated true character and a genuine concern for someone in need.’
John Thompson III, Porter’s former college coach at Georgetown, was not surprised by the glowing tribute, however, and said: ‘It’s just Otto being Otto.
‘I said it a lot last year when it came to the way he plays, but it’s also about the way he carries himself off the floor too.’
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