Google's Cardboard has proved to the masses that virtual reality is more than a pipe dream. Inexpensive cardboard headsets leverage smartphones to create makeshift head-mounted displays for low-level VR experiences.

For those whose fancies of owning a US$600 Rift or a $900 Vive were out of reach, Cardboard was a way to keep their imaginations captive while Google was dreaming of Daydream.

Coming two full Google I/O developer conferences after the introduction of Cardboard, Daydream gathers novel and nebulous ideas surrounding mobile VR into a cohesive ecosystem that someday could be a star.

Twinkle, Twinkle

Daydream builds on the Cardboard concept.

On the software side, Daydream and its VR tools will be baked into the upcoming Android N. Users will have the ability to switch between a traditional user interface and VR mode.

With Cardboard's cogs still in place -- things like VR versions of Street View and YouTube -- Daydream will arrive with a healthy amount of content. Further, Daydream-compatible apps from CNN, HBO Now, MLB.com, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Hulu, Netflix and IMAX are headed to the platform.

As for as hardware, Google has given top device manufacturers standards for developing Daydream-ready smartphones and headsets to hold them. Vendors selling the headsets will be required to package them with the Daydream remote control.

Nodding Off

Quietly, Google has been conquering the VR industry.

While most of the press has gone to the high-end headsets, such as the Rift and PS VR, Cardboard has become the world's most successful VR platform.

Cardboard app downloads have surpassed the 50 million mark, Clay Bavor, head of VR at Google, said during Google's I/O 2016 developers conference last month.

Those numbers are telling. Ultimately, Google has been looking to solve one of VR's most fundamental problems, suggested Abi Mandelbaum, CEO of YouVisit.

"While high-end developers like Oculus and HTC have worked to create headsets that provide highly immersive experiences, these pieces of hardware are very much unavailable to the general population due to their price tag and additional computer power needed to support them," he told TechNewsWorld.

As a result of its approximately $30-tall barrier to entry, Google's Cardboard platform has been a free-for-all to some degree, and its VR experiences are among the most basic of those on the market.

While hopes were high for a standalone headset to follow Cardboard, Google decided to make VR native to the phone, notedMarxent CTO Barry Besecker.

Google is "betting that mobile will be the key to VR proliferation, vs. desktop or console-based hardware like Oculus," he told TechNewsWorld.

Lucid Dreaming

Along with setting standards for Daydream hardware, Google will work to further establish itself in the VR market on the software side.

Through Daydream, "Google is helping to close another massive hole within the VR industry -- that is, the gap between the growing number of devices to view VR experiences and the limited amount of immersive content available to consumers," said YouVisit's Mandelbaum.

Google has kept consumers from nodding off while some awaited the release of the high-end headsets and others still await the affordability VR's second generation likely will bring.

That said, even though Google's VR efforts have held the attention of the masses, it's premature to consider them a success, according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

If Google sees Daydream through, the company's sheer scale and resources might help it claim ownership of the market-- but Google has developed a reputation for failing to follow through, he told TechNewsWorld.

"Daydream VR appears to be the new strategic direction for Google VR," Enderle said, but "be aware that Google has the attention span of a small child on sugar, so how long this will remain 'strategic' will likely be measured in months."

Waking Up

The noise Google has kept up with its VR initiatives may have kept consumers from falling asleep, but it also might be waking up the company's rivals. OnePlus, HTC and LG have gotten a relatively early start before VR rush hour arrives.

One Google rival might be sleeping in, though -- unless Apple is keeping long hours in a lab somewhere working on its own VR products, which is entirely possible, according to Roger Entner, principal analyst at Recon Analytics.

"Microsoft is betting on HoloLens, and we still have to see what's up with Apple," he told TechNewsWorld. "Often Apple comes a little bit later than the others, but then they do it a lot better. I think that's the game plan here."

If Daydream is everything Google hopes it will be, Apple could start to hear murmurs from its following if it doesn't come up with an answering volley.

While Cardboard eventually grew beyond Android to support iOS, Daydream is native to Google's mobile operating system.

That could be risky, suggested Google may need to find away to support other platforms or it risks making the same mistake as Oculus and Samsung did, according to YouVisit's Mandelbaum.

Samsung's Gear VR, powered by Oculus -- a platform much like what Daydream wants to be when it grows up -- arrived with a built-in ceiling. Gear VR is compatible with just four Samsung handsets, he pointed out.

"In order to be successful in offering universal access and driving both viewership and creation," Mandelbaum said, "Google will need to shift to a more device-agnostic strategy that allows consumers access, regardless of their technology or location.

 a powerful NMS for monitoring your network, physical & virtual (VMware/ HyperV) servers & other IT devices. Deploy and start monitoring in less than an hour. Trusted by over a million admins world-wide.

048x1· 536 display· All affected users are from US· and Puerto Rico.· and support for the carrier's 4G LTE network.

Google: Dare to Daydream

Google's Cardboard has proved to the masses that virtual reality is more than a pipe dream. Inexpensive cardboard headsets leverage smartphones to create makeshift head-mounted displays for low-level VR experiences.

For those whose fancies of owning a US$600 Rift or a $900 Vive were out of reach, Cardboard was a way to keep their imaginations captive while Google was dreaming of Daydream.

Coming two full Google I/O developer conferences after the introduction of Cardboard, Daydream gathers novel and nebulous ideas surrounding mobile VR into a cohesive ecosystem that someday could be a star.

Twinkle, Twinkle

Daydream builds on the Cardboard concept.

On the software side, Daydream and its VR tools will be baked into the upcoming Android N. Users will have the ability to switch between a traditional user interface and VR mode.

With Cardboard's cogs still in place -- things like VR versions of Street View and YouTube -- Daydream will arrive with a healthy amount of content. Further, Daydream-compatible apps from CNN, HBO Now, MLB.com, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Hulu, Netflix and IMAX are headed to the platform.

As for as hardware, Google has given top device manufacturers standards for developing Daydream-ready smartphones and headsets to hold them. Vendors selling the headsets will be required to package them with the Daydream remote control.

Nodding Off

Quietly, Google has been conquering the VR industry.

While most of the press has gone to the high-end headsets, such as the Rift and PS VR, Cardboard has become the world's most successful VR platform.

Cardboard app downloads have surpassed the 50 million mark, Clay Bavor, head of VR at Google, said during Google's I/O 2016 developers conference last month.

Those numbers are telling. Ultimately, Google has been looking to solve one of VR's most fundamental problems, suggested Abi Mandelbaum, CEO of YouVisit.

"While high-end developers like Oculus and HTC have worked to create headsets that provide highly immersive experiences, these pieces of hardware are very much unavailable to the general population due to their price tag and additional computer power needed to support them," he told TechNewsWorld.

As a result of its approximately $30-tall barrier to entry, Google's Cardboard platform has been a free-for-all to some degree, and its VR experiences are among the most basic of those on the market.

While hopes were high for a standalone headset to follow Cardboard, Google decided to make VR native to the phone, notedMarxent CTO Barry Besecker.

Google is "betting that mobile will be the key to VR proliferation, vs. desktop or console-based hardware like Oculus," he told TechNewsWorld.

Lucid Dreaming

Along with setting standards for Daydream hardware, Google will work to further establish itself in the VR market on the software side.

Through Daydream, "Google is helping to close another massive hole within the VR industry -- that is, the gap between the growing number of devices to view VR experiences and the limited amount of immersive content available to consumers," said YouVisit's Mandelbaum.

Google has kept consumers from nodding off while some awaited the release of the high-end headsets and others still await the affordability VR's second generation likely will bring.

That said, even though Google's VR efforts have held the attention of the masses, it's premature to consider them a success, according to Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

If Google sees Daydream through, the company's sheer scale and resources might help it claim ownership of the market-- but Google has developed a reputation for failing to follow through, he told TechNewsWorld.

"Daydream VR appears to be the new strategic direction for Google VR," Enderle said, but "be aware that Google has the attention span of a small child on sugar, so how long this will remain 'strategic' will likely be measured in months."

Waking Up

The noise Google has kept up with its VR initiatives may have kept consumers from falling asleep, but it also might be waking up the company's rivals. OnePlus, HTC and LG have gotten a relatively early start before VR rush hour arrives.

One Google rival might be sleeping in, though -- unless Apple is keeping long hours in a lab somewhere working on its own VR products, which is entirely possible, according to Roger Entner, principal analyst at Recon Analytics.

"Microsoft is betting on HoloLens, and we still have to see what's up with Apple," he told TechNewsWorld. "Often Apple comes a little bit later than the others, but then they do it a lot better. I think that's the game plan here."

If Daydream is everything Google hopes it will be, Apple could start to hear murmurs from its following if it doesn't come up with an answering volley.

While Cardboard eventually grew beyond Android to support iOS, Daydream is native to Google's mobile operating system.

That could be risky, suggested Google may need to find away to support other platforms or it risks making the same mistake as Oculus and Samsung did, according to YouVisit's Mandelbaum.

Samsung's Gear VR, powered by Oculus -- a platform much like what Daydream wants to be when it grows up -- arrived with a built-in ceiling. Gear VR is compatible with just four Samsung handsets, he pointed out.

"In order to be successful in offering universal access and driving both viewership and creation," Mandelbaum said, "Google will need to shift to a more device-agnostic strategy that allows consumers access, regardless of their technology or location.

 a powerful NMS for monitoring your network, physical & virtual (VMware/ HyperV) servers & other IT devices. Deploy and start monitoring in less than an hour. Trusted by over a million admins world-wide.

I'm on a mission, and that mission is to save on my power bill. I've already done the obvious stuff, like replace lightbulbs - especially the 500W halogens floodlights I have outdoors - with low-power LEDs, and I'm being more careful as to how I use heating and cooling. But along with making big changes, I've also been looking at just how much power all the random stuff I have plugged in uses.

Last week, I looked at how much power smartphone chargers consumed when there wasn't a smartphone attached to them. Now let's look at how much power it takes to charge a smartphone for a year.

Now, the proper way to do this test would be to measure the power consumption over a year. Well, I want results quicker than that, so I'd have to do shorter periods of real-world testing and extrapolate out the results, which shouldn't be a problem.

So, what I did rather than keep detailed charging note for a year, or find how much power it took just to charge the battery from 0 percent to 100 percent, and try to fudge that into some real-world figure, I replicated what most people do and put my smartphone on to charge overnight and measure the nightly power consumption.

I chose this method for two reasons:

• It's a usage pattern that matches how many people use their device
• It is more real-world, since when the device is on charge overnight, not only is power being used to charge the battery, but also to run the device (remember, your device is doing stuff in the background like checking email), so this goes beyond just measuring the power used to charge the battery

Power consumption was measured using a WattsUp? PRO power meter.

My test subject was the iPhone 6 Plus, which has the biggest battery that Apple offers. I'm also a pretty heavy user, and this meant that going all day was sometimes tricky (the things I do for you). This means that my results are going to be at the high-end, and that more restrained smartphone users are going to have a smaller power bill.

So here's what I found.

On average, during an overnight charge, the iPhone consumed an average of 19.2 Wh.

According to figures published by the US Energy Information Administration for January 2016, the average cost per kWh in the US was $0.12.

Remember that 1 kWh equals 1,000 Wh.

So, take our average of 19.2 Wh per day, multiplying that by 365 days, we get 7 kWh, which works out at $0.84 a year.

So if you guess under a dollar, well done.

How much does the electricity needed to charge a smartphone over the course o#Reforms

#Congress#Hillary Clinton#Republicans#Ferguson Сity#Obamacare#Ebola#MH17 crash#Afghanistan#Nuclear deal#Israel#Xi Jinping#Putin#Iran#Ukraine conflict#Boko Haram#Barack Obama

f a year cost? Under a dollar? A few dollars? Tens of dollars? Hundreds of dollars? Let's find out.

048x1· 536 display· All affected users are from US· and Puerto Rico.· How much does the electricity Under a dollar? A few dollars? Tens of dollars? Hundreds of dollars? Let's find out.

Here's how much it costs to charge a smartphone for a year

I'm on a mission, and that mission is to save on my power bill. I've already done the obvious stuff, like replace lightbulbs - especially the 500W halogens floodlights I have outdoors - with low-power LEDs, and I'm being more careful as to how I use heating and cooling. But along with making big changes, I've also been looking at just how much power all the random stuff I have plugged in uses.

Last week, I looked at how much power smartphone chargers consumed when there wasn't a smartphone attached to them. Now let's look at how much power it takes to charge a smartphone for a year.

Now, the proper way to do this test would be to measure the power consumption over a year. Well, I want results quicker than that, so I'd have to do shorter periods of real-world testing and extrapolate out the results, which shouldn't be a problem.

So, what I did rather than keep detailed charging note for a year, or find how much power it took just to charge the battery from 0 percent to 100 percent, and try to fudge that into some real-world figure, I replicated what most people do and put my smartphone on to charge overnight and measure the nightly power consumption.

I chose this method for two reasons:

• It's a usage pattern that matches how many people use their device
• It is more real-world, since when the device is on charge overnight, not only is power being used to charge the battery, but also to run the device (remember, your device is doing stuff in the background like checking email), so this goes beyond just measuring the power used to charge the battery

Power consumption was measured using a WattsUp? PRO power meter.

My test subject was the iPhone 6 Plus, which has the biggest battery that Apple offers. I'm also a pretty heavy user, and this meant that going all day was sometimes tricky (the things I do for you). This means that my results are going to be at the high-end, and that more restrained smartphone users are going to have a smaller power bill.

So here's what I found.

On average, during an overnight charge, the iPhone consumed an average of 19.2 Wh.

According to figures published by the US Energy Information Administration for January 2016, the average cost per kWh in the US was $0.12.

Remember that 1 kWh equals 1,000 Wh.

So, take our average of 19.2 Wh per day, multiplying that by 365 days, we get 7 kWh, which works out at $0.84 a year.

So if you guess under a dollar, well done.

How much does the electricity needed to charge a smartphone over the course o#Reforms

#Congress#Hillary Clinton#Republicans#Ferguson Сity#Obamacare#Ebola#MH17 crash#Afghanistan#Nuclear deal#Israel#Xi Jinping#Putin#Iran#Ukraine conflict#Boko Haram#Barack Obama

f a year cost? Under a dollar? A few dollars? Tens of dollars? Hundreds of dollars? Let's find out.

It seems even Microsoft is getting sick of bloatware.

The software giant has built a tool designed to "refresh" systems with a new copy of Windows 10, which takes aim at preinstalled junk apps, the security flaw-ridden apps that come bundled with almost every new consumer PC.

now included as part of Microsoft's second "fast-ring" test build of Windows 10 Anniversary Update this week.

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley has more on what's inside the new test build.

In an updated community page, Microsoft said the feature will reinstall a fresh copy of the operating system, which excludes necessary hardware drivers, as well as support applications -- known as "bloatware" or "crapware."

These preinstalled apps are often included on new notebooks, desktops, and even some Android devices. It's generally added by the device maker, and is often embedded deep in the operating system, making it difficult to remove. Making matters worse, they're often full of security flaws, putting the device owner at risk. Recently, a security firm discovered that every single PC maker installed bloatware that included at least one major security flaw, which could lead to device compromise or data theft.

Even Microsoft has taken heat in the not-so-distant past for its part to play.

Microsoft says its own line-up of Signature products are the "safest" devices, with claims on its website that device owners can "forget" about preinstalled bloatware. But the same security researchers found that these supposedly bloatware-free devices "also often included OEM update tools, potentially making their distribution larger than other OEM software."

Their report concluded that buying a Signature edition PC may be "beneficial," but users are "not guaranteed to protect end users to flaws in OEM software altogether."

Microsoft is expected to release Windows 10 Anniversary Update later this year.

The new feature downloads and installs a fresh copy of Windows, killing any pre-installed apps bundled in by PC manufacturers., 048x1, 536 display, All affected users are from US, 

048x1· 536 display· All affected users are from US· killing any pre-installed apps bundled in by PC manufacturers.· The new feature downloads and installs a fresh copy of Windows

Microsoft pushes new Windows 10 tool to kill PC bloatware

It seems even Microsoft is getting sick of bloatware.

The software giant has built a tool designed to "refresh" systems with a new copy of Windows 10, which takes aim at preinstalled junk apps, the security flaw-ridden apps that come bundled with almost every new consumer PC.

now included as part of Microsoft's second "fast-ring" test build of Windows 10 Anniversary Update this week.

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley has more on what's inside the new test build.

In an updated community page, Microsoft said the feature will reinstall a fresh copy of the operating system, which excludes necessary hardware drivers, as well as support applications -- known as "bloatware" or "crapware."

These preinstalled apps are often included on new notebooks, desktops, and even some Android devices. It's generally added by the device maker, and is often embedded deep in the operating system, making it difficult to remove. Making matters worse, they're often full of security flaws, putting the device owner at risk. Recently, a security firm discovered that every single PC maker installed bloatware that included at least one major security flaw, which could lead to device compromise or data theft.

Even Microsoft has taken heat in the not-so-distant past for its part to play.

Microsoft says its own line-up of Signature products are the "safest" devices, with claims on its website that device owners can "forget" about preinstalled bloatware. But the same security researchers found that these supposedly bloatware-free devices "also often included OEM update tools, potentially making their distribution larger than other OEM software."

Their report concluded that buying a Signature edition PC may be "beneficial," but users are "not guaranteed to protect end users to flaws in OEM software altogether."

Microsoft is expected to release Windows 10 Anniversary Update later this year.

The new feature downloads and installs a fresh copy of Windows, killing any pre-installed apps bundled in by PC manufacturers., 048x1, 536 display, All affected users are from US, 

Acer has quietly informed the California attorney general that its online store was attacked by hackers.

In a letter dated Wednesday, the Taiwanese technology giant admitted that an unauthorized outside party had taken a year's worth of full credit card data, names and addresses between mid-May 2015 and late-April this year.

The company said it hasn't found any evidence yet that passwords or logins were affected, but didn't outright rule it out.

An Acer spokesperson said the company has notified all 34,500 customers whose data was taken -- all of which are based in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

It's not thought to be related to a recent spate of "mega breaches," which included MySpace, LinkedIn, and Tumblr, which all suffered at the hands of historical hacks, leaking millions of accounts.

All affected users are from US· and Puerto Rico.· and support for the carrier's 4G LTE network.· Canada

Acer store flaw let a hacker steal a year's worth of credit cards

Acer has quietly informed the California attorney general that its online store was attacked by hackers.

In a letter dated Wednesday, the Taiwanese technology giant admitted that an unauthorized outside party had taken a year's worth of full credit card data, names and addresses between mid-May 2015 and late-April this year.

The company said it hasn't found any evidence yet that passwords or logins were affected, but didn't outright rule it out.

An Acer spokesperson said the company has notified all 34,500 customers whose data was taken -- all of which are based in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico.

It's not thought to be related to a recent spate of "mega breaches," which included MySpace, LinkedIn, and Tumblr, which all suffered at the hands of historical hacks, leaking millions of accounts.