4-Inch iPhone With Apple Pay May Be Coming Soon

Apple will launch an iPhone with a 4-inch display and support for Apple Pay in early 2016, according to a research note from an analyst with a good track record of predicting Apple products. The new iPhone model will have an A9 processor -- the same processor found in the latest iPhone models -- and a metal casing offered in several colors, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities said. The unit also will have 2.5D cover glass with curved edges and 8 megapixel rear-facing and 1.2 megapixel front-facing cameras.

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Facebook Lets Ordinary People Try Out Live Video

Facebook last week launched a beta of its Live Video service for a small percentage of iPhone users in the United States. Live Video reportedly will be available for the Android platform at a later date. Facebook also has launched a pilot to make it easier to share videos from mobile devices. Some iPhone and Android device users can tap the "What's on your mind?" prompt to trigger a drop-down menu of the options they can share. The lessons learned from that will help Facebook decide which new items to share in the future.

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Steve Ballmer's Excellent Android Adventure

Steve Ballmer last week presented an interesting plan to kill Android -- or at least compete with it. What's ironic is that Ballmer's tenure at Microsoft wasn't short of good ideas -- it was short on execution. In contrast, Satya Nadella has shown strength in execution but -- so far -- hasn't come up with anything that represents the kind of risks that Ballmer was willing to take. It kind of makes me wonder what would happen if the two men partnered for Microsoft's future.

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Gadget Ogling: Custom Kicks, Heartbeat Tricks, and Office Picks

I'm hardly the most stylish gent around town, but even I would consider wearing a pair of sneakers I could adorn to my liking at any time through their customizable display. ShiftWear's sneakers allow you to choose from myriad colorful or even animated designs through an app. Since the display is E-Ink-based, battery consumption is low, and a charge lasts around 30 days -- though animated looks are more power hungry. Batteries charge with each step you take. You can create your own designs and sell them in a marketplace for others to enjoy.

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Porsche Is on an All-Electric Mission

Porsche on Friday revealed plans to produce its first 100 percent electrically powered sports car under its Mission E project by the end of the decade. The Mission E concept car debuted at the Frankfurt International Motor Show earlier this year. The four-door vehicle utilizes a system power output that exceeds 440 kW and can accelerate from 0 to 100 kph in about 3.5 seconds, Porsche said. The concept vehicle, which is charged via an 800-volt charger unit, has a range of 500 kilometers.

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Yahoo Reintroduces a Messenger for This Millennium

In the midst of takeover speculation, Yahoo on Thursday reintroduced its standby Messenger app in a more robust version, with a set of features designed to breathe new life into a semi-comatose patient. Yahoo completely rebuilt the app with a focus on sharing images and online conversations. Tapping its Flickr, Tumblr and Xobni properties, Yahoo created some collaborative juice designed to counteract its image as the tech equivalent of P.M. Dawn -- an act that burned bright a generation ago, but rarely gets invited to the after-party these days.

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Wikipedia Uses AI to Assist Human Editors

The Wikimedia Foundation this week rolled out a service designed to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles. The Objective Revision Evaluation Service uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help Wikipedia editors identify damaging articles more quickly and assign quality scores to them more rapidly. Every day, Wikipedia is edited some 500,000 times, Wikimedia said. Editors, most of them volunteers, have to review all those changes. ORES lets those editors peer into incoming content to identify potentially damaging edits swiftly.

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