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TechNewsWorld -- "All Tech, All the Time"
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Verizon Lets the Sun Go Down on Unlimited Data
Wireless carriers have begun to realize that when you offer flat-rate, all-you-can-eat deals, it tends to bring out the pig in people. Whether it's food or beer or cellular data, customers will gorge themselves on it, and the buffet arrangement can quickly turn into a money-losing proposition if you don't plan it out just right.

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London's Burning Over Government Surveillance Plans
The UK government has proposed plans to monitor the electronic communications of everyone in that country. It claims it's not seeking to read the content of the communications, according to reports, but instead wants to know who the senders and recipients of messages are, the places from which messages are sent, and other details such as the length of messages and their formats.

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Iran Threatens to Sue Over Google Maps Slap
Today in international tech news: Still irked about Google Maps' non-labeling of the Persian Gulf, Iranian state-run media says the country is considering legal action against the search company. In the UK, police implement a system to extract data from mobile devices of detained suspects, while Sky News talks with police about the broadcast of a rape victim's name via a televised Twitter feed.

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Scalado Album's Photo-Mapping Skill Earns It a Niche
Have you ever found yourself scrolling endlessly around your phone's chronologically arranged photograph album -- called "Gallery" in Android -- looking for a photograph you've captured? If you can remember the specific place but not the date, then Scalado Album may be for you. I say "may be" because there are some downsides to using it over the stock "Gallery" app, which I'll get to.

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iPhone 5 Screen: Will Things Get Ugly?
Should Apple decide to increase the display size of the next version of its bestselling iPhone, it could present developers with new sets of both challenges and opportunities. Speculation about Apple boosting the screen found on the next edition of its smartphone isn't new, but it was renewed this week with a report predicting the new iPhone would have a display of at least four inches.

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SpaceX Dragon to Soar to Launch History on Falcon's Wings
When the SpaceX Dragon capsule blasts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station atop the company's Falcon rocket Saturday morning, it will be doing more than just setting off on another cargo-laden trip to the International Space Station. Rather, as the very first commercial attempt ever to fly to the ISS, this test launch will be making history.

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Paralyzed Woman Takes Sip of Joe Using Mind-Powered Robo Arm
Researchers have developed a robotic arm that has enabled a paralyzed woman to drink a cup of coffee -- by directly controlling it with her mind. The development has raised the question of whether this approach could perhaps restore some mobility to similarly affected people in the future.

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Android: What, Me Fragmented?
There are nearly 4,000 different types of devices running Android, OpenSignalMaps has found. More than 1,300 of them have custom ROMs that tweak the android.build model. Android brands are almost as diverse as the models, OpenSignalMaps discovered. Further, the application programming interface level, meaning the Android version, has also become more fragmented over time.

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Google's Knowledge Graph Answers Questions Searchers Haven't Yet Asked
Google is extensively updating its search function with the rollout of a new Knowledge Graph. The heart of the Knowledge Graph is a database Google has compiled, via its own research and through its acquisition of MetaWeb Technologies, of 500 million people, places, things and points of history.

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DDoS Blitz Floods The Pirate Bay
Today in international tech news: The Pirate Bay is hit with a massive DDoS attack. Meanwhile, Evernote launches its Chinese service, saying, "It's like we unlocked a whole new Earth that we didn't even know existed." Also: China is poised to overtake Japan in IT spending by 2013, and a Russian steel tycoon is poised to cash in big time on a Facebook gamble he made back in 2009.

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A Tale of Two Suites: Do We Still Need OpenOffice.org?
Would a rose by any other name still smell as sweet? Or would it, perhaps, end up sweeter? That, essentially, is the question at the heart of the forking process, which in turn is at the heart of a key situation today. Namely: Now that we have LibreOffice, do we still need OpenOffice as well? In the wake of Apache OpenOffice's new update, that's been the question du jour down at the Linux blogosphere's Punchy Penguin Cafe.

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Leaving Your Mark on the Web
There are a lot of photographs out there. Photo sharing and album network Flickr alone reckons it hit the 6 billion image upload mark last year. If you consider Picasa, Facebook, and the current darling known as Instagram, we're talking gazillions of images floating around -- all freely downloadable. It may be time to start protecting your work.

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Quantum Teleportation Leaps to New Distance Record
Scientists in China have transmitted quantum bits, or qubits, over a record distance of 97 km, or roughly 60 miles. This is more than six times the distance of the previous record of 16 km, set by another team of Chinese researchers in May of 2010, as reported in Nature.com.

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Can a Fresher Flickr Be Yahoo's Ray of Sunshine?
Flickr announced a redesign recently, introducing larger onscreen displays for high-res images. The photo sharing site launched what it calls its "liquid layout," stating that "Large sizes + Low compression = Beautiful photos." Since Flickr uses less compression than many other image sharing sites, it claimed, the detail and color of Flickr photos is richer.

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The MacBook Pro's Mystery Mix
With the expected unveiling of new MacBook Pros just weeks away, rumor mongers have begun to solidify their predictions about the new notebooks. Most Apple prognosticators seem to agree that the MacBook Pros will be thinner, run Intel's new Ivy Bridge chip, and sport an eye-popping Retina Display.

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The BBC's Olympian Streaming Ambitions
Today in international tech news: The BBC unveils plans to stream all 2,500 hours of the Summer Olympics. Elsewhere, Apple has reportedly engaged in talks with China Mobile, the world's biggest phone company, about teaming up to offer the iPhone; a criminal gets busted in Columbia for failing to log out of Facebook; and a report suggests most computer users in the world have acquired pirated wares.

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Whatever You Want, Miro Finds It, Gets It, Plays It
The Internet is a hub for acquiring music, video and a just about any other form of content. Miro is one of the most capable player apps that I have seen for all of this media. Keeping up with the various forms of content the Web has to offer can be a daunting task.

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Entertaining Home Technologies
Ever since the advent of the first radios and TVs, home entertainment has been a relatively high-tech enterprise, but in the past few years, there has been a revolution in the quality of sights and sounds available. This arena continues to be an experimental space for new and improved technologies that enhance viewing and listening experiences.

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Brainput Project Takes a Load Off Humans' Minds
A group of researchers from several universities led by MIT have shown that robots controlled mentally by suitably equipped humans who are multitasking can take over some of the workload when needed. The Brainput project had researchers use a technique called "functional near-infrared" imaging to measure the activity of brains in test subjects.

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Lenovo Shoots for Sexy With Svelt, Sleek Portables
Lenovo on Tuesday announced new Ultrabook ThinkPad laptops based on Intel's latest Ivy Bridge processor. Heading the procession is the upcoming X1 Carbon, which will use premium carbon fiber materials and is aimed head-on at the Apple MacBook Air. The lineup also includes new models in the ThinkPad T, X, L and W series aimed at small businesses, government agencies, educational institutions and large corporations.

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