9 Mind-Blowing Facts about the Brain

1. Your Brain is More Active When You Sleep

Night-time is the right time for your brain to process all the activity that has occurred during the day – that's why scientists think we dream (no one is really sure why). Some believe it's a way to process the complex emotions and interactions of our daily lives, others think it's just a way to zero-out information, much like a computer. A recent study showed it may help us alleviate trauma. People with higher IQs tend to dream more, and a nap during the day has proven to make people more energized and focused on their work. Tell that to your boss.

How to reclaim your email when LinkedIn’s Intro shuts down

LinkedIn’s attempt to wedge itself into iPhone users’ emails is being “shut down”—a euphemism for killed—as part of the professional network’s effort to focus “on fewer things.” But LinkedIn’s Deep Nishar said the company is still focused on email, so maybe its Intro product is going away because it was a little creepy. 

Intro launched in October as a way for LinkedIn to go beyond its own walls and be where you spend all your time: your email inbox. Intro placed a card with LinkedIn profile information in every email you received in the iOS Mail app, so if a stranger reached out to you by email, you could see their professional information and add them to your LinkedIn network.


Sounds like an easy way to verify if a stranger’s email is worth responding to, right? Well, security experts took LinkedIn to task for the tech behind Intro—LinkedIn acted as a middleman between you and the sender, rerouting emails to its own server to place the Intro card inside each message.
LinkedIn defended Intro, claiming that all information was fully encrypted and deleted from LinkedIn’s servers immediately. The network also never stored unencrypted email usernames or passwords or read the content of messages that passed between users.
It’s unclear if the controversy influenced LinkedIn’s decision to drop Intro, but Nishar said LinkedIn will “continue to look for ways to bring this kind of functionality to our members through existing partnerships.” It’s notable that Rapportive, a similar LinkedIn tool for Gmail users, was spared the wood-chipper.
If you installed Intro, there’s some bad news: Not only is the tool going away, but you have to uninstall it from your iPhone settings or your email will just stop working. As in, you won’t be able to send or receive emails at all. Removing Intro and restoring your old settings requires a little bit of effort. To uninstall: Settings > General > Profiles > Tap to remove all profiles that start with “Intro.”
Then you have to restore your regular account. Under Settings, tap Mail, then tap the account you want to restore and switch it back on. Remember, you have until March 7 to get your email situation squared away.

HTC UK creates Gramohorn II for HTC One

We’ve seen some crazy speaker ideas in our time but the Gramohorn II designed by Justin Wolter by commission of HTC UK is one of the cookiest. It’s a dock that features two horns (like on an old-timey gramophone, hence the name) that is designed specifically for the stereo BoomSound speakers on the HTC One.

HTC UK is using the Gramohorn II to kick off its “Here’s To Creativity” campaign. Strange that there’s no room for the BoomBass Speaker, but still it’s an interesting design piece, which goes well with the uniquely designed HTC One.

Anyway, there are two versions of the Gramohorn II – a plaster-based and a metal-based. The plaster one gives you a choice of 25 colors and it will set you back £999 ($1600/€1200). There will be 100 pieces made.

The metal one is more premium and comes in three finishes – Silver, Gold and Wheat Penny (all matte). Only 10 pieces will be made of each color, so they are fairly exclusive and have a price to match – £4999 ($8000/€6000).

Official Instagram beta app hits Windows Phone

A earlier promised, the popular photo sharing app Instagram is now available for Windows Phone 8 devices. The app is now ready to download from the Windows Phone Store although it’s still a beta version so you can try it at your own risk.

The application is not a completely finished product. In order to bring it to the market as quickly as possible, the developers have released it without support for video capture and uploading.

There are other missing features too. They include the inability to tag people in photos, as well as view maps from geotagged photos.

To make up for the missing features, Instagram for Windows Phone 8 has been optimized to support Live Tiles with data refresh. More importantly, the developer team will continue to fine-tune the app until it is fully on par with its Android and iOS counterparts at which point the final version should debut.

You can download the Instagram beta app for Windows Phone by hitting the Download link below. Feel free to drop us a line with your impressions in the comments section.

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