Latest update to Android app Remember the Milk makes it better than ever (Appolicious)

It’s a sign of the times that we all need some form of task-management tool, whether its your Outlook inbox or Post-It Notes littered across your desk. Remember the Milk functions as a web- and mobile-based utility to help you organize your reminders, lists and errands

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It’s a sign of the times that we all need some form of task-management tool, whether its your Outlook inbox or Post-It Notes littered across your desk. Remember the Milk functions as a web- and mobile-based utility to help you organize your reminders, lists and errands. It’s well-designed and can help you stay on top of your to-do list, but you’ll probably have to pay the service’s subscription fee to get the most out of it.

The latest update brings a fresh user interface that feels intuitive and useful. It’s simple to add a new task and tag it with categories, due date, priorities, notes and other details that help with organization. Big icons on the main dashboard screen present an overview of today, tomorrow, and this week so it gives you a good sense of what needs doing in your life.

Another new feature lets you act on multiple tasks at once in a list. You can check-off several tasks then delete them, postpone them, change their priorities, and perform other actions on them, all simultaneously. This means you can quickly restructure your day, if needed, by changing the due dates.

In order to use the app, you must sign up for a Remember the Milk account that lets you create and manage tasks over the web as well as the app. This also unlocks what I think is the best feature: location. Using an online map, you specify important locations in your life — your house, work, grocery store, etc. — and assign tasks to them. The next time you’re there, you’ll have the place-specific errands ready to go, so you can literally remember the milk.

However, the app spends a fair amount of energy selling the Pro version. For $25 a year, this adds the ability to receive notifications of tasks nearby (assigned to location in proximity), widgets for the home screen that let you add tasks without launching the app, and immediate syncing so that if you add a task over the web you’ll see it instantly over the app (rather than waiting 24 hours with the free version).

All in all, the service is useful if you don’t already have a task system embedded in your life, but you’ll probably need to pay for the important Pro features before it keeps you on track.

Download the free Appolicious Android app

Latest update to Android app Remember the Milk makes it better than ever (Appolicious)

It’s a sign of the times that we all need some form of task-management tool, whether its your Outlook inbox or Post-It Notes littered across your desk. Remember the Milk functions as a web- and mobile-based utility to help you organize your reminders, lists and errands.

View original post here:

It’s a sign of the times that we all need some form of task-management tool, whether its your Outlook inbox or Post-It Notes littered across your desk. Remember the Milk functions as a web- and mobile-based utility to help you organize your reminders, lists and errands. It’s well-designed and can help you stay on top of your to-do list, but you’ll probably have to pay the service’s subscription fee to get the most out of it.

The latest update brings a fresh user interface that feels intuitive and useful. It’s simple to add a new task and tag it with categories, due date, priorities, notes and other details that help with organization. Big icons on the main dashboard screen present an overview of today, tomorrow, and this week so it gives you a good sense of what needs doing in your life.

Another new feature lets you act on multiple tasks at once in a list. You can check-off several tasks then delete them, postpone them, change their priorities, and perform other actions on them, all simultaneously. This means you can quickly restructure your day, if needed, by changing the due dates.

In order to use the app, you must sign up for a Remember the Milk account that lets you create and manage tasks over the web as well as the app. This also unlocks what I think is the best feature: location. Using an online map, you specify important locations in your life — your house, work, grocery store, etc. — and assign tasks to them. The next time you’re there, you’ll have the place-specific errands ready to go, so you can literally remember the milk.

However, the app spends a fair amount of energy selling the Pro version. For $25 a year, this adds the ability to receive notifications of tasks nearby (assigned to location in proximity), widgets for the home screen that let you add tasks without launching the app, and immediate syncing so that if you add a task over the web you’ll see it instantly over the app (rather than waiting 24 hours with the free version).

All in all, the service is useful if you don’t already have a task system embedded in your life, but you’ll probably need to pay for the important Pro features before it keeps you on track.

Download the free Appolicious Android app

2 ex-State Street executive cleared of charges (AP)

WASHINGTON – Two former executives of State Street Bank & Trust Co. have been cleared of federal civil fraud charges of misleading investors about their potential risk from subprime mortgage investments in 2007. The chief administrative law judge at the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an order Friday dismissing the charges filed last year against John Flannery and James Hopkins

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WASHINGTON – Two former executives of State Street Bank & Trust Co. have been cleared of federal civil fraud charges of misleading investors about their potential risk from subprime mortgage investments in 2007.

The chief administrative law judge at the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an order Friday dismissing the charges filed last year against John Flannery and James Hopkins.

Judge Brenda Murray said neither Flannery nor Hopkins was responsible for the misleading documents alleged to have been provided to investors in the bond fund marketed by State Street Global Advisors.

Flannery was the chief investment officer of State Street Global Advisers; Hopkins was the head of product engineering.

Boston-based State Street agreed to repay investors about $300 million in February 2010 to settle charges by the SEC and Massachusetts regulators related to the bond fund. State Street also has paid around $340 million to investors to settle private lawsuits.

The SEC said the fund was marketed as an alternative to a money market fund. But it was almost entirely invested in securities tied to risky subprime mortgages, the agency said. The value of those securities plunged when the housing bubble burst in mid-2007.

Attorneys for Flannery and Hopkins issued statements Monday saying they were pleased with the judge’s decision in a case they asserted should never have been brought.

2 ex-State Street executive cleared of charges (AP)

WASHINGTON – Two former executives of State Street Bank & Trust Co. have been cleared of federal civil fraud charges of misleading investors about their potential risk from subprime mortgage investments in 2007. The chief administrative law judge at the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an order Friday dismissing the charges filed last year against John Flannery and James Hopkins.

See the original post here:

WASHINGTON – Two former executives of State Street Bank & Trust Co. have been cleared of federal civil fraud charges of misleading investors about their potential risk from subprime mortgage investments in 2007.

The chief administrative law judge at the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an order Friday dismissing the charges filed last year against John Flannery and James Hopkins.

Judge Brenda Murray said neither Flannery nor Hopkins was responsible for the misleading documents alleged to have been provided to investors in the bond fund marketed by State Street Global Advisors.

Flannery was the chief investment officer of State Street Global Advisers; Hopkins was the head of product engineering.

Boston-based State Street agreed to repay investors about $300 million in February 2010 to settle charges by the SEC and Massachusetts regulators related to the bond fund. State Street also has paid around $340 million to investors to settle private lawsuits.

The SEC said the fund was marketed as an alternative to a money market fund. But it was almost entirely invested in securities tied to risky subprime mortgages, the agency said. The value of those securities plunged when the housing bubble burst in mid-2007.

Attorneys for Flannery and Hopkins issued statements Monday saying they were pleased with the judge’s decision in a case they asserted should never have been brought.

Pete Townshend brands iTunes a ‘digital vampire’ (AP)

LONDON – The Who’s Pete Townshend says Apple Inc.’s iTunes is a “digital vampire” that profits from music without supporting the artists who create it. Townshend says that faced with the Internet’s demolition of copyright protection, iTunes should help artists by giving space to allow them to stream their music, and pay smaller artists directly rather than through a third party aggregator The guitarist on Monday delivered the first John Peel Lecture, named in honor of the influential British radio broadcaster who died in 2004. Townshend asked if there was any reason iTunes “can’t provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire” to make money

Continued here:

LONDON – The Who’s Pete Townshend says Apple Inc.’s iTunes is a “digital vampire” that profits from music without supporting the artists who create it.

Townshend says that faced with the Internet’s demolition of copyright protection, iTunes should help artists by giving space to allow them to stream their music, and pay smaller artists directly rather than through a third party aggregator

The guitarist on Monday delivered the first John Peel Lecture, named in honor of the influential British radio broadcaster who died in 2004.

Townshend asked if there was any reason iTunes “can’t provide some aspect of these services to the artists whose work it bleeds like a digital vampire” to make money.

ITunes declined to respond to Townshend’s comments.

MGM, Boyd, Bwin.party in deals for U.S. online poker (Reuters)

(Reuters) – Casino operators MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming on Monday unveiled a plan to partner with online poker company Bwin.party Digital Entertainment, subject to the legalization of Internet gambling in the United States. Gibraltar-based Bwin.party, the world’s largest publicly traded online gaming company, was formed earlier this year through the merger of Austria’s Bwin and PartyGaming.

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(Reuters) – Casino operators MGM Resorts International and Boyd Gaming on Monday unveiled a plan to partner with online poker company Bwin.party Digital Entertainment, subject to the legalization of Internet gambling in the United States.

Gibraltar-based Bwin.party, the world’s largest publicly traded online gaming company, was formed earlier this year through the merger of Austria’s Bwin and PartyGaming.

Bwin.party would own 65 percent of a start-up company that would offer online poker to U.S.-based players, while MGM would own 25 percent and Boyd would have a 10 percent stake.

U.S. prosecutors earlier this year accused the owners of three of the largest Internet poker companies of tricking regulators and banks into processing billions of dollars in illegal gambling proceeds.

That crackdown scuttled a similar deal between online gambling operator PokerStars and Las Vegas-based Wynn Resorts Ltd.

MGM closed its original Internet gambling operations in mid-2003, citing regulatory uncertainties.

“There is now an overarching opinion in Washington that this needs to be addressed,” MGM Chief Executive Officer Jim Murren told Reuters in a telephone interview. “U.S. citizens are putting their financial assets at risk on sites that the U.S. government has no comfort over how they are being operated.”

Wynn, MGM and other brick-and-mortar casino operators have been lobbying hard in recent years for U.S. legalization of online poker — which they say is primarily a game of skill, rather than other forms of gambling where the customer is playing against the “house.”

Their goal is legislation at the federal level, but legalization efforts are also underway in several states.

“Federal legislation is a vastly better solution … to avoid any ambiguities in laws,” Murren said.

Casino companies argue that millions of Americans are already playing online poker on web sites operated from overseas and legalization would bring that revenue to the United States, where it could be taxed, jobs would be created and integrity could be assured.

Opponents, including groups like the Southern Baptist Convention, say online gambling is an irresponsible way to raise revenue.

Boyd and MGM also said each has agreements to use Bwin.party’s technology under its own brands.

MGM owns 10 casinos on the Las Vegas Strip, ranging from Circus Circus to the Bellagio, as well as casino-resorts in Mississippi and Michigan and joint ventures in New Jersey and Macau, the only place in China where gambling is legal.

Boyd, which runs Las Vegas properties that cater mainly to local residents rather than tourists, owns and operates 16 casino properties in six states.

(Reporting by Deena Beasley; editing by Richard Chang)

Occupy Wall Street Turns Toward Winter Logistics

[unable to retrieve full-text content]If last weekend’s snowstorm downed 1,000 trees in Central Park and left 3 million without power, you can easily imagine that the protesters at Occupy Wall Street are a little worse for the wear.

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[unable to retrieve full-text content]If last weekend’s snowstorm downed 1,000 trees in Central Park and left 3 million without power, you can easily imagine that the protesters at Occupy Wall Street are a little worse for the wear. On Saturday, The Guardian’s Ryan Devereaux talked to one protester who said, “We’re in the Valley Forge stage now. …

Most smartphone users want 4G but don’t have much info about it (Appolicious)

Cellular carriers have been really brandishing the term “4G” in marketing and advertising for months now, and it appears the media blitz is working. According to a new survey from market research firm In-Stat, 75 percent of its 1,208 respondents said 4G is “one of the features their ideal phone would include,” as a story from Boy Genius Report states. However, when the survey takers were asked questions such as which carrier has the fastest 4G speeds, the respondents were at a bit of a loss.

Continued here:

Cellular carriers have been really brandishing the term “4G” in marketing and advertising for months now, and it appears the media blitz is working.

According to a new survey from market research firm In-Stat, 75 percent of its 1,208 respondents said 4G is “one of the features their ideal phone would include,” as a story from Boy Genius Report states. However, when the survey takers were asked questions such as which carrier has the fastest 4G speeds, the respondents were at a bit of a loss. Many said they thought speeds were the same across all carriers, or they just didn’t know.

There’s no real unified standard for what qualifies as “4G” in marketing and advertising, so the term has basically come to mean “faster than 3G,” the current standard among smartphones in the U.S. While carriers are working to build 4G LTE networks, with Verizon and Sprint notably adding lots of markets all the time to their coverage, the providers are also marketing technologies that aren’t really 4G as 4G. A notable example is HSPA+, a data transfer technology that’s technically faster than 3G but not nearly as fast as 4G LTE. HSPA+ is currently available on lots of devices, but only recently did carriers such as AT&T start marketing those devices as “4G-capable.”

One lawmaker has introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress that would force telecom companies to have a real, unified definition of what 4G is and isn’t, but according to BGR, that bill isn’t expected to make it into law (even though it would be a really good idea and help protect consumers).

Despite the findings of the survey, there’s a lot to know and a lot of discrepancy among carriers when it comes to 4G LTE. The whole technology is relatively young and has not yet been fully implemented anywhere. Verizon intends to bring its 4G LTE network coverage to 35 more markets by the end of November, which would put it in 175 markets across the country. Sprint is also adding markets (albeit more slowly), and intends to offer the service in 120 markets by the end of 2011.

But with more and more smartphones using Google’s Android platform becoming 4G-capable, the whole market is getting more saturated and more confusing. If you’re looking for a 4G phone, it’s definitely worth doing a little research and comparison shopping before picking up your next Android device to make sure you’re getting the fastest speeds, and to make sure your area is actually covered by the service.

US home video spending up for 1st time since 2008 (AP)

LOS ANGELES – In a welcome relief for Hollywood, Americans are finally spending more on home videos. For the three months through September, spending rose nearly 5 percent from a year earlier to $3.9 billion. The figures from an industry organization, The Digital Entertainment Group, show the first increase since the recession took hold in early 2008

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LOS ANGELES – In a welcome relief for Hollywood, Americans are finally spending more on home videos.

For the three months through September, spending rose nearly 5 percent from a year earlier to $3.9 billion. The figures from an industry organization, The Digital Entertainment Group, show the first increase since the recession took hold in early 2008.

While people bought fewer DVDs and made fewer trips to brick-and-mortar rental video stores, they more than made up for it by buying more Blu-ray discs, renting more from kiosks like Redbox and spending more on mail-order DVDs and streaming videos from Netflix.

Buying digital copies of movies and ordering them from set-top box video-on-demand services also rose. For the year, though, spending is still down about 2 percent at $12.3 billion.

Jurassic Park for Xbox Live delayed in Europe (Digital Trends)

Telltale Games’ Jurassic Park will be available on both Playstation Network and Xbox Live here in the U.S.

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Telltale Games’ Jurassic Park will be available on both Playstation Network and Xbox Live here in the U.S. on November 15, but European Xbox gamers will likely have to wait until 2012 to get in on the dinosaur-filled fun.

Over at the developer’s official website, one of the Telltale team announced the delay for Xbox Live, and said the company hopes to have word soon on the European release date the title on Microsoft’s gaming network.

“Europe is a big deal to us so we’re working hard to have the game out on PSN in Europe on the same day as here in North America. We’ll be able to confirm that soon hopefully,” wrote the Telltale rep.

“As for Xbox 360, we are not a European publisher i.e., we don’t have a European office. That means that we need a publishing partner over there to get the game out to you,” the rep continued. “The good news is that we’ll be able to make an announcement on that soon. So, while we won’t be able to get the 360 version to you before the end of the year, we’ll do everything that we can to get it to you as soon as possible.”

Still, Playstation Network gamers here and abroad should have no problem getting their fix of Jurassic Park right on schedule. The game will also be available on PC the same day, too.

This article was originally posted on Digital Trends

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