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Julius Genachowski has revealed that Hurricane Sandy has knocked out a full quarter of cellphone towers and cable services in the 10 most affected states. The FCC chief believes that, as more towers expend their battery back-ups and the storm’s continued presence, the situation’s going to get worse before it gets better. He’s also reiterated that users should avoid making non-essential calls and use e-mail or social media to avoid overloading the straining networks. One point of interest in the call, was that land line phone outages were much less widespread — which might be something to remember if you’ve ever considered cutting the cord.
from Engadget
Disney is already one of the biggest media companies around, and it’s now set to become even bigger. The company announced late today that it’s acquiring Lucasfilm Ltd., currently 100 percent owned by founder George Lucas, for $4.05 billion in a cash and stock deal. That of course includes the rights to both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones film franchises, as well as Lucasfilm properties like Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. What’s more, the press release announcing the deal also confirmed that Disney is now targeting 2015 for a release of Star Wars: Episode 7, and that its “long term plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years.” No word yet on a proper release of the original, original trilogy.
Continue reading Disney acquires Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, plans more Star Wars movies
from Engadget
Last night, and possibly because the month of October came to a close, Google Now started showing a new card to a number of our readers. That new card is a pedometer that has been tracking their steps and miles biked over the last couple of months, behind the scenes. I say “behind the scenes†because this is a card that we have yet to see or hear about. In fact, I took a quick look through Google Now settings and could not find this feature mentioned.
Pretty cool though, right? As you can see in one of the screenshots, it actually compared September to October and split up the activities depending on activity type. There is a mention under the results that reads “Based on your device’s location which is periodically sent to Google.†A Learn more link sits below it, but doesn’t provide any useful info.
Has your Google Now pedometer card showed up? Feel free to post ‘em in the comments.
Cheers Zeas, NCSUgolfer01, cory, Stephen, Dale, Jose, Grady, Matthew, and Brian!
from Droid Life
According to Asus executives, sales of the Nexus 7 are approaching 1 million units per month. Speaking during their quarterly earnings call, their CFO mentioned that during the first couple of months it was 500K units, then 600K, then 700K, with the most recent month closing in on seven figures.
Up until now, we have only been able to guess what sales have been like, because Google refuses to provide sales figures. Some predicted that the number was sitting around the 800K-1M mark, but those predictions seem to be way off. This news from Asus paints a much brighter picture than I think even I was willing to predict. If you go back to launch and tally up those numbers, you are looking at close to 3 million Nexus 7 units sold. While that’s not on iPad level, it’s impressive for an Android tablet.
Now, with 32GB versions with 3G coming, a price drop of the 16GB model, and the holiday shopping season around the corner, those number should only continue to climb.
Are you surprised by these sales figures? I know I am.
Via: Â WSJ
from Droid Life
