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Follow the Samsung Developer Conference with Android Central Live!

It's always good to keep a close eye on what the competition is doing, and we're on the ground this week in San Francisco for the Samsung Developers Conference with Android Central – the official community partner for the event. Our buddies Phil Nickinson and Andrew Martonik will be broadcasting the very best Samsung has to offer this week through the very wonderful Android Central Live! Think back to CrackBerry Live from Orlando earlier this year, and you'll get a sense of what to expect.

Things are about to kick off with the keynote address, so hit up the links below and join Android Central for all the best coverage of the Samsung Developers Conference!

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/LZ0rnMfc2mw/story01.htm
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Vatican's 'culture minister' tweets Lou Reed song

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican's 71-year-old culture minister, paid his own tribute on Monday to the late rocker Lou Reed, tweeting one of his best-known songs before clarifying he was not condoning any reference to drugs some have seen in the song.

Ravasi, an Italian who is the same age as Reed was when he died on Sunday, tweeted the third verse from Reed's song "Perfect Day".

"Oh, it's such a perfect day/I'm glad I spent it with you/Oh, such a perfect day/You just keep me hanging on".

There have been many interpretations of the song's meaning, ranging from drugs to a simple love story.

Just to make sure no-one thought Ravasi was condoning the use of drugs, he later tweeted a Bible passage that warns against "illusions" and noted that Reed quoted from the passage when he spoke in the song about reaping what one sows.

Ravasi is a Bible expert who represents the Roman Catholic Church to the worlds of art, culture, science and even to atheists and says he is a firm believer in the power of contemporary culture.

Reed, whose most famous hit, "Walk on the Wild Side" included themes such as transvestites and prostitution, died on Sunday in Long Island, New York from complications from a liver transplant.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/vaticans-culture-minister-tweets-lou-reed-song-173602177.html
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New looks and a familiar favorite for NBA 2013-14

Houston Rockets' Dwight Howard, center, shoots over San Antonio Spurs' Tim Duncan. left, and Danny Green (4) during the first half of a preseason NBA basketball game, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Miami Heat's LeBron James (6) shoots over Brooklyn Nets' Joe Johnson (7) during the second half of an NBA basketball game Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013 in New York. The Nets won the game 86-62. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose warms up before an NBA preseason basketball game against the Denver Nuggets in Chicago on Friday, Oct. 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Los Angeles Clippers power forward Blake Griffin, center, goes up for a dunk as Utah Jazz power forward Derrick Favors and point guard Scott Machado look on during the first half of their NBA basketball game, Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)

Dwight Howard moved on and Derrick Rose came back, though Kobe Bryant won't quite yet. Nine first-time coaches are coming in and David Stern will soon head out.

With different looks all around the NBA in 2013-14, one familiar sight remains: LeBron James and the Miami Heat are entering another season as the team to beat.

The two-time defending champions will collect their rings Tuesday night, then open against the Chicago Bulls, who with a healthy Rose might be the team that can unseat the Heat.

Or maybe it's San Antonio or Indiana, both a game away last year — actually, the Spurs were just seconds away — from finishing off Miami. Perhaps it's the Nets or Clippers, after both picked up pieces of the old Celtics that had the Heat's respect but not their number.

If someone does dethrone King James, it won't be because he was satisfied with two titles and lost his edge.

"When the hunger is gone, I'm going to give it up," James said. "I've got a talent and I'm going to take full advantage of it. So I'm hungry.

"I love the game. There's nothing I would do more than play this game of basketball. So the championships are all great, but I'm playing for more than that. I've got a bigger calling than that."

If he means becoming the best ever, he might be on his way. With four MVP trophies and no noticeable weaknesses, the gap with his peers is getting larger and the one with the greats before him is shrinking.

"He's the best on the planet right now. I don't know what you can do, but just hope that he misses," said Nets coach Jason Kidd, one of the nine coaches getting his first opportunity. In total, 13 teams changed coaches.

James did miss in the closing seconds of Game 6 of the NBA Finals, but the Heat got the rebound to set up Ray Allen's tying 3-pointer, pulled it out in overtime and won Game 7 to deny the Spurs a fifth title.

San Antonio may get another chance to finish the job, or may not even be the best team in Texas after Howard joined James Harden in Houston.

Howard bolted after one unfulfilling season in Los Angeles, where he and Bryant never found a working partnership. The center already seems happier and healthier in Houston, where he and Harden can build a potent inside-outside tandem.

As for Bryant, he'll watch the Lakers' opener, and who knows how much more, while he continues to rehab from a torn Achilles' tendon. Questions over how well he can play at 35 after such a serious injury, along with Howard's departure, created unusually low expectations for the Lakers.

Instead, the buzz in Los Angeles is about the Clippers, who hired Doc Rivers to coach while Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett went to Brooklyn after Boston's breakup. That also could make both longtime losers not only the current kings of their cities, but also contenders to reach the NBA Finals — which are returning to the 2-2-1-1-1 format after 29 years of 2-3-2.

Here are five other things to watch around the NBA this season:

SITTING SPEEDSTERS: While Rose returns after sitting out last season with a torn ACL, Russell Westbrook and Rajon Rondo remain out recovering from knee surgeries. A healthy Westbrook makes Oklahoma City a title contender while Rondo could help the Celtics exceed expectations — or perhaps become the next player they trade.

UP AND COMERS: They're not ready to contend for a title, but keep an eye on New Orleans, Washington and Cleveland, all with dynamite young players who may be good enough to carry their franchises back to the postseason.

CHANGING COMMISSIONERS: Adam Silver replaces the retiring Stern as commissioner on Feb. 1, exactly 30 years after Stern took office. Silver has done much of the heavy lifting for years, but he'll be replacing one of the greatest executives sports has seen. "I'm excited for the league and for the future, and for the fact that having been at the league now for 36 years, we've reached this point and there's a really extraordinary executive in Adam ready to take it to the next level," Stern said.

SUMMER STORIES: Business will really pick up after the next NBA champion is crowned. Kansas freshman Andrew Wiggins, should he decide to enter the draft, could become the most sought-after prospect in years. Free agency will then open on July 1 with James and Carmelo Anthony perhaps set to top the class.

WHO WINS?: The Heat are the choice of everyone from odds makers to the executives who voted in the NBA.com GM survey. But they were enormous favorites last season after a 27-game winning streak during a 66-win regular season and almost fell. This time, there's even more teams capable of finally knocking them off. "They are the favorites, but I don't think they're the heavy favorites," Hall of Famer and TNT analyst Charles Barkley said. "Everybody's picking the Heat right now, but there's some teams, they're going to have some stiff competition."

___

Follow Brian Mahoney on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Briancmahoney

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-10-28-BKN-NBA-Overview/id-7b593f718a0546278374a57031061f25
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BlackBerry Z30 hits Verizon in November for $200

Verizon gave no details when it announced plans to offer the BlackBerry Z30, but it's finally narrowing things down... well, mostly. The 5-inch BB 10.2 flagship is now poised to reach Big Red sometime this November (the carrier isn't being more specific) for $200 on contract. It's billed as a US ...

Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/3ExGfL8ymp0/
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Judge Rules Texas Abortion Restrictions Unconstitutional

New abortion restrictions passed by the Texas Legislature are unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Monday in a divisive case the state has already vowed to appeal.

In an opinion issued Monday, District Judge Lee Yeakel said the state's effort to regulate abortions violated the rights of doctors who perform the procedure to do what they determine is best for their patients, and would unreasonably restrict women from accessing abortion clinics.

According to The Washington Post:

"Roughly a dozen abortion providers filed a federal lawsuit last month saying that the requirements, which were due to take effect Oct. 29, would end abortion services in more than a third of the state's licensed facilities and would eliminate services altogether in Fort Worth and five other major cities. Texas attorney general Greg Abbott had argued the new restrictions, adopted this summer, were aimed at providing better medical protections for both women and their fetuses.

"The provision requiring doctors to obtain hospital admitting privileges 'does not bear a rational relationship to the legitimate right of the State in preserving and promoting fetal life or a woman's health and, in any event, places a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion of a nonviable fetus and is thus an undue burden to her,' Yeakel wrote."

The newspaper describes Monday's ruling as "a legal victory for abortion rights providers," but NPR's Wade Goodwyn says "the state is not happy" about the ruling and "is already vowing an emergency appeal to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals."

Goodwyn says that the 5th Circuit is "one of the most conservative courts in the country," and if it overturns Judge Yeakel's ruling "it's very likely that Planned Parenthood and their allies would appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/28/241444452/judge-rules-texas-abortion-restrictions-unconstitutional?ft=1&f=1001
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Asap54: A Mobile App That Lets You Snap, Automatically ID And Buy The Clothes You Like

Fashion has been one of the most promising and most dynamic categories of e-commerce in the past several years. But it has also been one of the most problematic. Thanks to virtuality, we now have at our fingertips more choices for what to buy and wear than ever before. But that also means a predicament: with infinite variety on offer, how do you sift through that to find the things you really want to buy?

asap54 2 Asap54, an app and startup launching today as part of the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt Europe in Berlin, is proposing an answer to that question: find clothes that you like around you in the physical world, take a picture of them with you phone, and let Asap54 find you that exact piece, along with a bunch of others that are similar, so that you can get started. Think of it as a Shazam for fashion.

The concept is actually a well-tested and popular one in the analog world: fashion magazines high and low love to present candid street style pictures with subsequent dissections for readers about how and where to “get the look.” Asap54 — a play on getting your information “as soon as possible” and the slick street style of legendary fashion-forward New York disco club Studio 54 — is taking that basic concept and applying tech smarts to take it into the 21st century.

Working with a PhD in photo recognition and machine learning called Daniel Heesch (who had also co-founded another image recognition company called Pixsta), and 20 other engineers, Asap54 has created algorithms that identify clothes as well as fabrics.

asap54 It then lets the user look specifically for the item in question, or change up some of the parameters — for example the colors; the article of clothing from, say, a shirt to a dress; the price; or selecting a specific designer. The results are presented in a picture-based list, and the user buys not directly from Asap54, but from specific online stores, with Asap54 collecting an affiliate fee in the process.

Then, if you are still not happy with the algorithmically generated results, you can also select an option to get a human fashion expert to analyse your picture and make suggestions; or you can turn to Asap54′s social network, a place where the Asap54 community can post pictures to crowdsource suggestions for pieces that are exactly the same or similar. “‘Never let the user down,’ is what we consider our motto,” founder Daniela Cecílio tells me.

There are a number of companies actively looking at ways of using image recognition to make fashion discover easier. They include startups like Pounce and Snapfashion but also established players like eBay. What sets Asap54 apart from the crowd is its very mobile-first approach — first as an iPhone app, then soon to come to iPad and Android. The other is the fact that it can be used on clothes on the go. (Pounce focuses on printed pictures in magazines and newspapers; eBay on its own site.)

On top of the companies that are already working on similar solutions, there are a number of others that you can imagine are probably looking at products like this, if not already developing them internally.

They include the likes of Pinterest, which just last week inked a deal with Getty Images to use its metadata to tag Getty pictures and then use that to provide other related pins to users. As the site looks further into commercialising its service, you can imagine how the company might use technology like this to lead users to more engagement and commerce via their platform.

Then you have Instagram. The company, now owned by Facebook, is going big on the fashion vertical, which has found a very natural affinity with the image-sharing network. Many designers already use it as a (free) marketing vehicle, Kevin Systrom pointed out in September, when he was in London for London Fashion Week. At the same time, he also pointed out that a big issue for the company will be to work out the best way to monetize that connection without annoying loyal and avid users.

While “Buy now!” buttons are probably not in the cards, could there be slick link between users’ candid snaps of cool clothes and then buying those pieces? It does seem much more plausible. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Facebook also owns some very powerful image recognition technology of its own, by way of Face.com.

Yes, this spells competition for Asap54, but also opportunity (and customers, and maybe even an exit somewhere). This is where execution will come into the game.

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Cecílio, the Brazilian founder of Asap54, is not your average fashionista entrepreneur. She is the ex-COO of the hip fashion portal Farfetch (a marketplace for boutiques and designers) where she helped build out the company’s business in key markets like her native country. And there is something else: she’s actually the wife of Farfetch’s founder, Jose Neves.

I asked Cecilio why she decided to go out on her own to start Asap54 rather than figure out how to develop it within Farfetch itself. The answer was simple: she wanted her own thing, and she also thinks that it’s not always best to work with your significant other (note: from personal experience, I agree). He seemed to like the idea of her going out on her own for business: he’s also one of her backers.

There is also the fact that Asap54 goes beyond what Farfetch does: it has the potential to become a portal for shopping across many sites. Quite a fashionable lady herself, Cecilio told me that she woke up one night consumed by the idea that she needed an app just like this one. I mentioned that it seems once you have texture and shape nailed, there is no reason not to take it to other areas, like home furnishings or for non-ecommerce purposes in areas like industrial design or other enterprise purposes. She says that she’s sticking to what she knows and feels most passionate about; but there may be plans down the line for white-labelling.

Cecilio says that initially, Asap54 will launch in a limited beta to 200 users to test drive the service before a proper launch later this year. For now, check back in a bit to see a demo of the service in a video embed.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/kfMHXiCBiGo/
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Syrian troops retake Christian town from jihadis

In this photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA, destroyed weapons and ammunitions carried by Syrian rebels like at the site after they were killed by Syrian government forces according to SANA, near the Otaiba area, near Damascus, Syria, Friday, Oct. 25, 2013. Syrian government troops on Friday ambushed rebels near the capital, Damascus, killing at least 40 opposition fighters, state media reported. The ambush was part of the military's offensive against rebel strongholds around President Bashar Assad's seat of power. (AP Photo/SANA)

U.N. and Arab League envoy on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi listens to a journalist during a join press conference in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Oct. 26, 2013. (AP Photo)

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian government forces retook a Christian town north of Damascus from al-Qaida-linked rebels who seized control of part of it a week ago, touching off fierce clashes, state media and opposition activists said.

The recapture of Sadad came as the U.N.-Arab League envoy arrived in Syria on his first trip to the country in almost a year.

Lakhdar Brahimi is trying to prepare a peace conference on Syria supposed to take place in Geneva next month. But it's unclear if the gathering will take place as planned, since Syria's warring factions refuse to face each other at the negotiating table.

The United States and Russia have been trying for months to convene the conference to negotiate a political solution to Syria's civil war. More than 100,000 people have been killed and some 2 million have fled the country since the conflict erupted in March 2011.

After his last trip to Syria in December 2012, Brahimi had angered Syrian authorities when he said that 40 years of rule by the family of President Bashar Assad was "too long." Syrian officials then accused him of being biased.

This time, Brahimi visited several countries in the region, including Iran. He said Saturday that the participation of Tehran — a key backer of Assad — at a Syria peace conference was "necessary." On Monday, Brahimi travelled from Tehran by private jet to Beirut, then continued by road to Damascus.

In the Lebanese capital, he would not speak to reporters. "I will speak when I return," he said.

Brahimi was received in Damascus by Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad. During his visit, expected to last several days, Brahimi will meet Syrian officials as well as members of local opposition groups. It is not clear if he will meet Assad.

Assad told the Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV last week that Brahimi "should abide by his mission and not go out of this framework." Assad added that Brahimi "is a mediator and the mediator should be neutral and stand in the middle."

Assad added that Brahimi, during one of his visits to Syria, "tried to convince me about the necessity of not running in the coming presidential elections in 2014. This was at the end of 2012. My answer was clear, that this is an internal Syrian affair and is not negotiable with any person who is not Syrian."

Arab League's chief Nabil Elaraby recently said the Geneva conference would be held on Nov. 23. Brahimi, however, has stressed that no date has been set but that the United Nations hopes to organize the gathering in late November.

A U.N. diplomat, speaking only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, said Monday Syrian deputy prime minister, Qadri Jamil, met with U.S. officials in Geneva over the weekend to discuss the possibility of holding a second Geneva peace conference, but no breakthroughs were reported to have come out of the talks.

The fighting in Syria, meanwhile, has continued unabated. The state-run SANA news agency said the army "restored security and stability" to the town of Sadad, 120 kilometers (75 mile) north of Damascus, early on Monday.

It said "a large number of terrorists" were killed and their weapons seized, adding that the army dismantled scores of roadside bombs planted by gunmen around the Christian town.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the government had retaken the town but that rebels had successfully withdrawn.

Much of Sadad had been in opposition hands since last week, when al-Qaida-linked groups captured a checkpoint that gave them control of the western part of the town.

The rebels appear to have targeted Sadad because of its strategic location near the main highway north of Damascus, rather than because it is Christian. But hard-liners among the rebels are hostile to Syria's Christian minority, which fears the radicals and tends to favor Assad. Other al-Qaida-linked fighters have damaged and desecrated churches in areas they have seized.

SANA said the army was still pursuing opposition fighters who fled Sadad for surrounding farms. It also reported that the rebels had vandalized the town's Saint Theodore Church and much of Sadad's infrastructure.

Meanwhile, the Observatory said, hard-liners torched an Armenian church in the northern town of Tel Abyad along the border with Turkey late on Sunday.

___

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and John Heilprin in Geneva contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-10-28-ML-Syria/id-d0d9f20e7d384fb891affcc85bda6c7d
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Follow the Samsung Developer Conference with Android Central Live!

Vatican's 'culture minister' tweets Lou Reed song

New looks and a familiar favorite for NBA 2013-14

BlackBerry Z30 hits Verizon in November for $200

Judge Rules Texas Abortion Restrictions Unconstitutional

Asap54: A Mobile App That Lets You Snap, Automatically ID And Buy The Clothes You Like

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Syrian troops retake Christian town from jihadis

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