Sprint's New $60 Unlimited Data Plan: What's the Catch?

Not content with its recent announcement to increase data and lower prices for its family plans, Sprint is unveiling a new plan that gives you unlimited everything for just $60 a month. The new plan includes unlimited, talk, text and data for $20 less than T-Mobile’s unlimited plan. That adds up to a savings of $480 over two years.

It seems like that Sprint hopes to combat the Un-carrier’s latest announcement to give a year’s free unlimited LTE data for person and a friend when they both switch to T-Mobile from Sprint, Verizon or AT&T.

MORE: Top 10 Smartphones

While the plan will be available for both new and existing customers, customers will need to either already have a compatible phone, buy a new phone for full retail price, or enroll in Sprint’s Easy Pay program. Easy Pay allows users to purchase a phone for a small initial down payment, and pay off the phone through installments over 24 months. The initial and monthly payments vary based on the chosen phone, with a 16GB Apple iPhone 5S  and Samsung Galaxy S5 currently available for $0 down and $27 per month.

Finally, after all the paperwork is signed, users will still have to deal with Sprint’s lethargic 4G network, which is the slowest of the four major carriers. While Spark data rates are speedy when you can get it, coverage is spotty and results from our network testing has Sprint often struggling to break 3 Mbps up and down on 4G. Also, unlimited data isn’t quite bottomless as the top 5 percent of users will see their speeds throttled, a method also used by other carriers.

The biggest takeaway is that competition is heating up between carriers. In the wake of the failed purchase of T-Mobile by Sprint, there is no love lost between the third and fourth largest U.S. carriers.

Sam is a former penguin trainer and archery instructor who dabbles in esports and has lived on three different continents. If you have some comments on new tech or the best noodles spots in NYC, drop a line @SamRutherford.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Free Windows 8.1: What’s the Big Deal?

Microsoft is reportedly developing a free version of its Windows 8.1 operating system in an effort to drastically increase the OS’ user base. Dubbed Microsoft 8.1 with Bing, the OS could be offered to OEMs or end users as a means to provide customers with access to important Microsoft services. According to a report from The Verge, which cites unnamed sources, Windows 8.1 with Bing could be made available as an upgrade to Windows 7 users.

This isn’t the first time Windows 8.1 with Bing has been reported on. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, said the SKU could be part of Microsoft’s effort to monetize different aspects of its software offerings. That said, Foley admits she is unsure if Windows 8.1 with Bing will offer any Bing-specific user incentives. Truth be told, Windows 8.1 already has a built-in Bing SmartSearch feature that can search a user’s PC, OneDrive and the Web in one shot.

MORE: Top 25 Windows 8 Apps

Microsoft has tried to entice consumers to use their services before. The recently announced Android-powered Nokia X phone will come preloaded with Windows OneDrive and offer free Skype calling. Nokia and Microsoft hope the move will pull in Android users who have never been exposed to the Microsoft’s smartphone apps and eventually. The thinking is that if users enjoy the apps, they will naturally want migrate to Windows Phone devices.

Microsoft’s Qi Lu, who heads the company’s Bing efforts, has previously gone on record saying the company is working to convert Bing into an information platform that it can then embed in any device or service. The idea is to build Bing into a first-class offering that will help the company take share from Google.

via: The Verge, ZDNet

A newspaper man at heart, Dan Howley wrote for Greater Media Newspapers before joining Laptopmag.com. He also served as a news editor with ALM Media’s Law Technology News, and he holds a B.A. in English from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Linksys EA6900 802.11ac Wi-Fi router review: Too expensive for what’s delivered

After acquiring Linksys from Cisco, Belkin changed only one element of the EA-series industrial design with the EA6900: The company added adjustable/upgradeable antennas. That design change doesn’t seem to have had the performance impact Belkin was hoping for. The EA6900 is a good router, but it’s certainly not a barn-burner.

Well, it might be in one respect, but you might not care: The EA6900 finished far ahead of the pack in terms of its 2.4GHz 802.11n performance (with the notable exception of when the client was located in my acoustically isolated home theater). Its performance as an 802.11ac router was unexceptional when paired with Linksys’s own WUSB6100 Wi-Fi adapter, only on par when paired with Linksys’s own WUMC710 Wi-Fi bridge, and relatively weak when paired with a second EA6900 configured as a Wi-Fi bridge.

ROBERT CARDIN

Adding adjustable antennas to the Linksys EA6900 didn't appreciably increase this router's wireless performance.

The EA6900 is a dual-band router delivering throughput of 450 mbps on its 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11n networks, and up to 1300 mbps on its 5GHz 802.11ac network. As I’ve already mentioned, it features adjustable/upgradeable antennas.

As with several of the other routers I’ve tested recently, the EA6900 has one USB 3.0 port and one USB 2.0 port, so it can share both USB storage and a USB printer on your network. It has FTP and SAMBA servers, as well as DLNA and UPnP media servers, but it doesn’t have an iTunes server. It supports VPN pass-through, so you can log into your company’s VPN, but it doesn’t have its own VPN server. You can nonetheless access a storage device attached to the router from the Internet using Linksys Smart Wi-Fi and a third-party DDNS (Dynamic Domain Name System) service.

You may configure the router manually, or you may establish a free account to use all the online features of Linksys Smart Wi-Fi, including remote access to a storage device or an IP camera attached to the router. If you do sign up for a Smart Wi-Fi account, you can link several compatible Linksys routers and manage them all from the same online portal. This is convenient if you’re the default networking tech support for friends or family (provided they also buy Linksys routers, of course).

ROBERT CARDIN

Like most high-end routers, the Linksys EA6900 is equipped with one USB 3.0 port and one USB 2.0 port, so you can share both storage and a printer on your network. 

Smart Wi-Fi also provides better-than-typical parental controls, including the ability to block websites based on their content and establishing time limitations when Internet access is allowed from specific computers. If parental controls are activated, you must provide a password to bypass them. You can operate a guest network on the EA900, but only on the 2.4GHz network.

Like most routers, the EA6900’s Quality of Service capabilities are limited to prioritizing traffic that’s uploaded to the Internet. That’s great for lag-sensitive applications such as VoIP, videoconferencing, and online games, but it can’t manage traffic coming down from the Internet.

The EA6900 can be configured to operate as a router, as a Wi-Fi access point, or—with a recent firmware update—an 802.11ac wireless bridge. Like the Asus RT-AC68U and the Netgear Nighthawk, the EA6900 supports TurboQAM, but I don’t count that as a major advantage because most adapters on the client side don’t support TurboQAM. As a router, the EA6900 proved to be much faster than the Buffalo WZR-1750DHP and the Trendnet TEW-812DRU, but well behind the aforementioned Asus and Netgear devices.

Linksys provided me with early firmware that enabled me to convert a second EA6900 into an 802.11ac wireless bridge, so early firmware might explain why TCP throughput between the two was relatively poor. It came in last at all four locations where I placed the bridge and the client.

My next test paired the EA6900 with the Linksys WUMC710 802.11ac wireless bridge, and it pretty much ran with the pack with the exception of reaching the client when it was in my difficult-to-penetrate home theater. It tied for fourth place at that location.

When paired with Linksys’s own WUSB6100 client adapter, the EA6900 turned in a respectable performance, taking third place overall. Compared to the rest of the pack, it performed better in the two longer-range tests than it did when the client was close by.

Linksys’s router wasn’t nearly impressive as a 5GHz 802.11n router, except when the client was at its furthest distance from the router. It took a first-place finish when the client was in my home office, 65 feet from the router.

The Linksys EA6900 delivered a surprisingly strong performance as a 2.4GHz 802.11n router, beating the rest of the field at three of my four test locations (the one exception being when the client was in the home theater, where the EA6900 placed third).

The EA6900 performed very well as a network-attached storage device. The Netgear R7000 crushed every other device, and the Asus RT-AC68U placed second, but Linksys took a very respectable third-place finish.

The Linksys EA6900 performed reasonably well in most of my tests, and it has a very solid feature set. But its $190 street price is high considering that the Netgear R700 costs just $9 more and delivers far superior performance. The D-Link DIR-868L is also much faster, and it costs a full $40 less. Linksys needs to do better.

Michael manages PCWorld's hardware product reviews and contributes to TechHive's coverage of home-control systems and sound bars.
More by Michael Brown

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

Samsung Galaxy Note 3 vs. Galaxy Note 2: What’s New?

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From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Apple iPad Mini vs. Google Nexus 7: What’s the Best Small Tablet?

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From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

Review: Find out what's taking up space on your drive in seconds with WizTree

WizTree If you're looking for a very quick and simple way to see what's taking up space on your drive, WizTree can get the job done.

Download Now

Clearing out hard drive space is never fun, so it should at least be a quick and painless task. Antibody Software's WizTree is a free and tiny utility that scans NTFS volumes at blazing speeds, making it possible to home in on the largest files and folders in no time at all. It's available in a portable version, too, so you can carry it around on your USB stick to help out friends and colleagues in need.

WizTree's simple interface makes it easy to see what's taking up space on your drive.

Unlike SpaceSniffer and WinDirStat, WizTree doesn't represent occupied space using a treemap. In other words, rather than get a graphical display in which each folder is a proportionately-sized rectangle, you simply get an ordered list with the largest files and folders on top. It's a simple format, but it's not as intuitive as a treemap. On the plus side, it's extremelyfast: WizTree took 1.4 seconds to scan my 256GB SSD, and 7.45 seconds to scan my 2TB magnetic drive.

The simple display makes it easy to dig into folders to figure out what exactly is taking up so much space within the folder. The initial scan doesn't just cover the top level: It recurses through the entire drive, so there are no delays as you drill down the folder hierarchy. Subfolders (and sub-sub-subfolders) are instantly displayed with clear percentage bars. The contents of each subfolder is sorted by size, although you can manually sort by name, number of items, number of files, number of folders, or modification time.

Next to the tree view tab, there's a second tab showing the 1,000 largest files on the drive. That's useful for finding individual files that are hogging lots of space, like VM images, HD videos, and archives you may not need anymore.

WizTree's second tab lets you quickly see which individual files take up the most space on your drive.

You can permanently delete files from within WizTree, or send them to the recycle bin, and the display updates accordingly. However, if any external activity changes the drive's contents (such as files being copied from another location while WizTree is open), WizTree will not automatically refresh to reflect the changes. In actual use, this isn't much of a problem.

WizTree is simple, tiny, and has absolutely no frills. It gets the job done and is easy to use. If you don't need a treemap, it's one solid way to figure out what's taking up space on your drive.

Note: The Download button will download the software to your system. This product is donationware. It's free to use, but the developer encourages donations.

From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

What's the difference between Microsoft SkyDrive and SkyDrive Pro?

Clearing Up Microsoft SkyDrive Pro Confusion - CIO.com #drilldownNav .ddNavItem a {padding: 0 7px;} CIO.com White Papers Webcasts Solution Centers BlackBerry: Build up your BlackBerry® 10 knowledge Dell: Welcome to Dell AppAssure HP + Microsoft Data Management Appliances & Architectures Oracle-Endeca Executive Toolkit: Bringing Agility to Your BI Environment Riverbed Accelerate Your Network with WAN OptimizationSymantec Archiving Solutions for Microsoft Exchange Server View all Solution Centers IT Jobs CIO Executive Council Events Magazine Archive Subscribe Subscriber Services Newsletters RSS NEWS ANALYSIS BLOGS SLIDESHOWS VIDEOS HOW TO DRILLDOWNS Applications Big Data BYOD Careers Cloud Consumer Tech Mobile Operating Systems Outsourcing Security Social Media All topics DRILLDOWNS All topics Technology Applications Architecture Cloud Computing Data Center Developer Hardware Internet Mobile Network Open Source Operating Systems Security Social Media Storage Virtualization Business / Management Careers Consumerization of IT Financial Results Industry Verticals IT Organization Investments Leadership/Management Legal Mergers/Acquisitions Outsourcing Project Management Risk Management Supply Chain Management Var/Reseller Venture Capital window.fbAsyncInit = function() { FB.init({ appId : '129182073794488', // App ID channelUrl : '//www.cio.com/documents/chan.html', // Channel File status : true, // check login status cookie : true, // enable cookies to allow the server to access the session xfbml : true // parse XFBML }); FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function(response) { if(typeof(OPG.Eloqua) != 'undefined') OPG.Eloqua.refresh_iframe("social");}); }; // Load the SDK Asynchronously (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); Clearing Up Microsoft SkyDrive Pro ConfusionMicrosoft SkyDrive Pro gives storage space to individual users in an organization with SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise. It's conceptually similar to, but not the same as, the free consumer SkyDrive cloud storage service. Here's what else you need to know about Microsoft's SkyDrive services. By Jonathan Hassell
Thu, April 11, 2013

CIO—Microsoft's SkyDrive service has gained a lot of traction over the past couple of years, given that it works well across numerous platforms (including Gmail and Xbox 360) and is easy to use. With Office 2013 and Office 365, Microsoft introduced a SkyDrive Pro service that is oriented toward businesses and enterprises.

There's a ton of confusion about exactly what SkyDrive Pro and SkyDrive really are, especially when you rate them against each other. (As usual, the Microsoft branding machine confuses perfectly good and functional software with names that are impossible to parse.) Let's take a few minutes to cover exactly what each service is and what their limitations are.

SkyDrive Pro: The Basics

SkyDrive Pro, put simply, is a business storage space for individual users. SkyDrive Pro is a feature and capability that comes from a SharePoint Server 2013 Enterprise license—a license that you can buy either to run on servers in your own datacenter premises or access through a subscription to Office 365 on a monthly or annual basis.

News: Yammer to Deliver Office Web Apps, SkyDrive Pro Integration This Summer

SkyDrive Pro works and is available in both places, and it even functions the same way no matter where you run it, but the key part to remember is that it is a function of SharePoint and nothing else. It has absolutely no relationship to the free service of a very similar name that's discussed below.

Here are six key points to remember when thinking about SkyDrive Pro:

SkyDrive Pro is a user-focused solution. It's not a way to migrate a ton of documents and other data from file systems stored on your network to SharePoint to make those elements available to all. Rather, it's a place for users to store documents they care about that would be convenient to access from a variety of devices and places.

SkyDrive Pro is essentially a replacement to the old My Site feature that was available within SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013. It's a place for users to store files they might want to share with others in the future. For instance, you might be working on a budget spreadsheet that needs constant updating, so you could save a copy to your SkyDrive Pro location and invite other users to read, view and update that copy on their own.

With SkyDrive Pro on Office 365, each user gets 7 GB of space that is notcounted against the overall SharePoint storage quota that is part of the plan you pay for. For SharePoint Server 2013 on-premises installations, administrators can configure the SkyDrive Pro space quota on an individual basis. While you can purchase add-on space to pool more available gigabytes for your overall SharePoint sites and workspaces on Office 365, you can't currently buy more storage to extend SkyDrive Pro spaces. (This may well change in the future, though.)

Tips: 7 Things About SharePoint 2013 All IT Pros Should Know and SharePoint 2013 Challenges and Questions for CIOs

There is a SkyDrive Pro client application, but at this point it's available only as part of the Office 2013 suite. If you don't have an Office 2013 license, you're forced to use SkyDrive Pro through the browser just like most of your interactions with other parts of the SharePoint product.

The SkyDrive Pro client application behaves like the old SharePoint Workspace client application. It synchronizes the online content with an offline cache so you can still access files, documents and other objects from the site just like you were online, even if you are stuck without a connection somewhere.

Finally, as of this writing SkyDrive Pro works only for Windows and Web browsers. There are no native client applications for other operating systems.

It's also worth noting that SkyDrive Pro is definitely not a free-for-all when it comes to data storage. Microsoft has imposed the following limitations:

In your SkyDrive Pro library, you can synchronize up to 20,000 items, including folders and files.No single file can be greater than 250 MB in size. You can download files up to 2 GB from your library.

If you're running Office 2013 and feel like you need to wait to explain SkyDrive Pro to users, you can remove the hooks within Windows Explorer that expose the space. Just issue the following command at the elevated administrative command prompt:

regsvr32 /u "%programfiles%\Microsoft Office\Office15\GROOVEEX.DLL"

Similar to this Article SkyDrive Decision Reveals Microsoft's Office on iOS Strategy Microsoft's Wave of Office, Server Product Releases Brings Flood of Questions Microsoft Office 2013: Best New Features for the Enterprise How to Overcome SharePoint Performance Headaches Continue Reading

1 2 next page » Print @import url("http://www.cio.com/styles/twitter.css?03252010"); More from CIO What Will the iPhone 5S and iOS 7 Look Like?2013 IT Salary Survey HighlightsBarriers Standing Between You and Big Data Insight12 Ways to Write a Better Cover Letter #intercept_textlink {border-bottom: 1px dotted #B4B4B4;padding: 6px 0 13px 2px;margin-bottom:4px;}#intercept_textlink p {font-size: 16px;font-weight: bold;line-height: 20px;}#intercept_textlink p span {text-transform:uppercase;}#intercept_textlink p a:link,#intercept_textlink p a:visited {color:#036;text-decoration:none;}#intercept_textlink p a:active,#intercept_textlink p a:hover {color:#036;text-decoration:underline;}#recommended_links { font-family: Arial,Verdana,Helvetica,Sans-serif; float: left; width: 100%;padding: 14px 0 10px 2px;clear: both;}#recommended_links .subhead { font-size: 18px; font-weight: bold;line-height: 20px; padding-bottom: 15px;color: #000;margin: 0;}#recommended_links ul {margin: 0; padding: 0;overflow:hidden;}#recommended_links ul li {list-style-type:none;float:left;width:100px;margin-right:58px;}#recommended_links ul li.last {margin-right:0;}#recommended_links ul li img {clear:both;padding-bottom:10px;width: 100px;height: 80px;}#recommended_links li a { color: #003366; font-size: 14px; line-height: 16px;font-weight: bold;} You are here: Applications » Office Applications » How To Most Recent Office Applications Stories Clearing Up Microsoft SkyDrive Pro Confusion Office for iPad in 2014? Big Mistake Want Microsoft Office on iOS or Android? You May Wait Until 2014 Collaboration in Microsoft Office is Painful but Not Impossible Microsoft Releases Office 2010 SP2 Public Beta Latest from How to get your employees to take mobile security seriously The new digital divide: Mobile-friendly jobs vs. being confined to the office Google picks up team that built Android data-collection tool Rackspace: Develop mobile apps over a weekend with our new platform Old ways die hard: Office 365 not penetrating the enterprise yet Follow CITEworldFacebookTwitterRSSGoogle+Email Newsletter White Papers » Escape Lotus NotesWith the Salesforce Platform, you can develop and deploy mobile, secure, scalable apps faster than ever. You'll get real-time reporting, visual work-flow, and with automatic feature upgrades, your apps will always have the latest innovations. Escape Lotus NotesWith the Salesforce Platform, you can develop and deploy mobile, secure, scalable apps faster than ever. You'll get real-time reporting, visual work-flow, and with automatic feature upgrades, your apps will always have the latest innovations. Secure Your PDFs by Integrating PDF into Microsoft's Active Directory Rights Management ServicesFor customers that utilize Microsoft® Active Directory® Rights Management Services to protect documents, Foxit's PDF Security Suite extends AD RMS protection for PDF documents. Download this whitepaper to learn how. The Right Solution to Create, Collaborate, Edit, and Secure PDF DocumentsThe growth of PDF has exploded; therefore the need to generate PDF has exploded as well. Download this whitepaper to learn how Foxit can help with business-ready PDF solutions. 7 Key Trends in the Business of TechnologyK2 outlines seven key trends within the business of technology, identifies the key capabilities necessary to exploit these trends and provides a few examples of those already doing it. 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Better Business CollaborationThis webinar will teach you about smart process apps-a new category of software that makes collaborative processes more productive and flexible. The Mobile EnterpriseToday's mobile enterprise requires important data anywhere, anytime. And with mobile enterprise applications, IT needs to offer simple, easy-to-use apps that employees will embrace - without compromising security. Straight From the Source: RIM Panel Answers Your Top BlackBerry 10 QuestionsThere's a lot to know about BlackBerry® 10. 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From PC World. Electronics product reviews and advice for best reference

What’s the Fastest Cloud Storage Service?

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From Laptopmagazine. Product reviews and advice for best reference

What’s New in Streaming Music Services?

Streaming music services offer more ways to listen than ever, and they’re far more economical than paying for downloads or CDs. But the steadily growing number of options can make your head spin. Some streaming services, like Pandora, use automated recommendations, while others are more connected with seeing (and hearing) what your friends are into. 

What can I listen to?

Most services that have deals with all or most of the major record labels offer at least 10 million songs. But there are a few holdouts, such as Metallica, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. If you can’t find most of what you’re looking for on one of these services, maybe you to try the vinyl section at your local record shop.

Do I have to pay for it?

You can listen for free, but you’ll have to endure radio-style ads, monthly listening limits, or only “radio station” streams based on a genre. Subscription fees of $5 to $15 get you features such as on-demand song selection, unlimited ad-free listening and access on mobile devices and Internet TVs. Some premium plans let you store songs on your computer or mobile device so you can listen offline. That could help keep you under the monthly data limit for your smartphone or tablet.

Can I share music with friends?

All services let you post your listening to Facebook (sometimes automatically), and most support Twitter. Some let you send song links directly to friends, but the savviest ones let you see what other folks are listening to in real time.

What’s the next big thing?

Apps. They’re a huge hit on Internet-connected devices like computers, smartphones, TVs and set-top boxes. All of the major streaming services offer apps on Facebook so you can listen from within your profile page. Spotify recently took it a step further and introduced apps for its own service, giving you access to editorial content, integration with other services like Last.fm and much more.

What services can I choose from?

You’ve probably heard of Pandora’s customized Internet radio stations, but here are a few other services worth checking out:

Grooveshark.com

 Free: unlimited listening on your computer or mobile device, with adsPlus: ($6/mo.) no adsAnywhere: ($9/mo.) adds playlist creation and offline listening on mobile devices (Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, Palm webOS)

MOG.com

FreePlay (free): limited amount of listening per month on your computerBasic ($5/mo.): adds Roku TV set-top box access and LG TV access on some modelsPrimo ($10/mo.): adds Sonos wireless audio system access, iPhone/iPod Touch/Android access, and offline listening on mobile devices and computers

Slacker.com

Basic (free): unlimited listening on your computer, smartphone or tablet with ads and limited song skipsPlus ($4/mo.): no ads, offline listening, ABC News, ESPN News, lyrics access, unlimited song skipsPremium ($10/mo): adds the ability to choose specific songs and create playlists; offline listening on devices (Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, Palm webOS)

Splash.FM

Free: unlimited Web listening of songs uploaded by independent artists.Major-label tracks are limited to 30-second streaming samples, but you can purchase the tracks for download

Spotify.com

Free: unlimited Web listening with ads;Unlimited ($5/mo.): no adsPremium ($10/mo.): higher-quality streams, offline access on your computer and mobile devices (Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Nokia Symbian, Palm webOS)

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

Events-Discovery App Ravn Lets You Know What’s Going On in Your City

Doing the same things over and over for fun can get boring, too, after some time. But what choice do you have when there’s no way to stay on top of everything happening in your city? Ravn—an app we saw at SXSWi’s Startup Spotlight—solves this problem. Ravn essentially shows you local events and other cool things to do in your city, using a vast database of over 20,000 handpicked activities.

And that’s “handpicked” in the truest sense of the word. We spoke with Steven Ou, CTO at Ravn, who explained to us that real people are behind the updates to these events within the app. A team of about 30 individuals constantly searches for and curates only the most interesting events in each of the cities Ravn covers, ranging from casual fare like food festivals to more decorous selections like wine tastings.

Of course, how you discover these events is entirely personalized as well. You can choose the events categories you prefer, peruse events listed by title and photo, add them to a Wishlist and see who else will be in attendance–both friends and strangers. Swiping through events is always pleasant, as Ravn emphasizes a visual browsing experience: The app utilizes attractive little thumbnails to represent activities and lets you look through them in full-screen mode if you wish, when you tilt your iPhone horizontally.

Ravn is live in over 50 cities around the world, and is free and available in the iTunes Store now.

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here

What’s Gamification, and How Can It Make You Happier in Life and Work?

NextJump’s CEO Charlie Kim had seen numerous studies showing that people who exercised regularly and ate healthy also tended to have more energy and perform better in their jobs. So he decided to build gyms at the company’s office. Initially, though, only about 10 to 15 percent of NextJump employees worked out.

Realizing he’d have to get more creative, Kim devised a system where funds were set aside to serve as a reward for employees who worked out the most. Kim broke the company down into five teams, and the team that collectively worked out the most would win the pot and split it among the group. As a result, workouts increased.

Then Kim took the concept even further. He created a leaderboard with live updates that ranked teams from those who worked out most often to those who worked out the least. Then he had a team of engineers build an app that kept track of the number of times employees checked into the gym each week. When you selected a team on the leaderboard, you could see each individual member of that team and how many times they went to the gym that week.

The app indicated if you had already fulfilled your goal of going to the gym twice a week, displayed a yellow status (of “almost there”) if you’d checked in just once and showed a big red X next to your name if you hadn’t gone at all.

Using these two game mechanics of team play and leaderboards, Kim got much better results. Today, an average 85 percent of NextJump employees work out more than three times a week.

So what about Steve? Since he started taking advantage of NextJump’s free gym services, he’s increased his weight from a scrawny 160 pounds to 170, and he’s healthier than he’s been in his entire life. Steve’s parents have sent Kim numerous notes to thank him, telling him how Steve has changed completely as an individual.

“It’s tricky with engineers who are so used to a particular lifestyle,” said Kim. “But when suddenly everyone starts working as a team, everyone’s incentivized—they’re motivated, and you don’t even need to figure out how to get people to go to the gym.”

Gabe Zichermann, chair of the Gamification Summit and author of “Gamification by Design and Game-Based Marketing,” said a key aspect of gamification is to make our interactions with people more fun. “Most of our interactions, especially in the workplace, are pretty boring,” Zichermann said. “We don’t have a lot of fun, and gamified systems can often bring a little bit of fun to things which are fundamentally work.”

According to Zichermann, gamification can take two different forms: apps that make use of real-life concepts and integrate them deeply into the way they’re played, and apps that borrow concepts from games to create user engagement without making them into what we normally think of as explicit games. A pair of apps that illustrate this distinction are MyTown and Foursquare, both location-based social networking services.

With MyTown, gameplay is similar to “Monopoly,” but it’s out in the real world: There are buying-and-selling aspects of your favorite real-life places, rent collection and upgrading your property to increase its market value. Foursquare utilizes the same premise—checking into places you like—but instead uses mileposts within the game to signify success. Badges, challenges and leaderboards hook the user and give them a clear goal to aim for next.

Foldit is an intriguing example of how a gamified application can make legitimate strides to advance a field of knowledge—in this case, science. The app managed to help the scientific community by crowdsourcing free labor from tens of thousands of volunteers. It’s an online puzzle game that enables users to compete against each other to fold the structure of certain proteins. Since proteins make up part of the composition of many diseases, figuring out how they fold is valuable information that can also be part of the cure.

Playing the game, 46,000 users were able to predict the structure of a protein called retroviral protease, an enzyme that plays a critical role in the way HIV multiplies. Researchers hadn’t been able to decode the protein in more than a decade.

Through other apps, gamification has also remade the concept of giving feedback to individuals. Two apps in this category stand out in particular: DueProps and Rypple. Both apps were designed with the purpose of improving workplace communication. The apps allow the exchange of real-time feedback between employee and employee, employee and superior or superior and subordinate. You can even use your mobile device to give a person virtual items to thank them for a job well done. Moreover, they’re being widely employed at well-known companies such as Facebook, changing the way people are motivated at work.

We asked NextJump’s Kim how he managed to change his workers’ outlook on healthy exercise.

“Actually, it’s interesting,” Kim answered. “I never used the word ‘gamification.’ I used the word ‘motivation.’ If you stop and think about the best motivators in the world—they’re usually the top leaders in an organization—and if you look at what they do to motivate, there’s most likely a gamification element in there.”

From Laptopmagazine. Visit Amazon Computer and Notebook Center Here