In the wake of the Megaupload takedown, it might seem like a good time to back away from increasingly locked-down cloud storage. After all, you don’t want to lose all your media if the worst happens. At least one digital locker is bucking the trend: Google Music. The search giant’s cloud music service added a new feature this week; US users can now download their entire MP3 library, both purchased and uploaded tunes. The result might be the ultimate free music locker.

When Google Music launched, it offered users a handy desktop app that monitored the entire music library on a PC, helpfully uploading new tunes to the cloud. Many users spent days getting all their songs into Google only to realize that, in some misguided effort to appease overly-cautious music labels, those songs were stuck in the cloud. Only purchased songs could be downloaded to a local PC, which made Google Music a pretty awful backup option.

Under the new policy, you can use the Google Music Manager software to download the entire library, or songs can be downloaded individually from the web interface (although you are limited to two downloads per track there). Should you ever lose any music, anything you uploaded to, or bought from Google can be restored.

This simple change means that Google Music makes enormous sense as a music backup service. Google has confirmed that accounts will remain free, and you can put 20,000 tracks in your account. That’s more than enough for most users, and you never have to worry about manually backing up. Google’s Music Manager keeps your cloud up to date while sitting quietly in the background.

The other cross-platform music locker of note is Amazon, which turned some heads last year when they began offering free upgrades to 20GB accounts with any album purchase. These accounts also have unlimited music storage space. The only problem is that it’s been almost a year since Amazon started offering the deal, and unless you pay the $20 membership fee, it’s back to the free 5GB plan very soon. Only music bought from Amazon gets unlimited storage then.

Because Amazon’s music uploader app doesn’t run as a service, you have to manually update your Cloud Player library, which is less than ideal for backup. Amazon also lacks an option to download all your music at once like the Google Music Manager does. If you need to restore your tunes after a catastrophe, you don’t want to go one album at a time.

Google Music now has all the hallmarks of a truly great backup system for your music. It updates itself, offers ample free storage, and lets you blast your collection down onto any hard drive with the Music Manager software. Android users also get the added extras of mobile streaming and caching. Even if you don’t plan to stream tracks from Google Music, it can’t hurt to have a free backup of your tunes in Google’s cloud

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Dead Zebra, Inc is known for making these awesome little Android collectibles. They have been featured on AndroidSwag for quite some time and due to their popularity are often hard to find. Last year, in celebration of the Chinese New Year they kicked off a special edition with Cai Shen, the god of wealth!

This year they've expanded the offering with 3 new collectibles, a so-called "Full Family of Fortune" if you will. There is a very limited supply, so you might want to make a new calendar entry with a bunch of reminders or you'll miss out on this opportunity.

The first batch will be available in the Dead Zebra Shop starting Wednesday, January 25th at 11AMEastern Standard Time. The second batch will go online Wednesday, January 25th at 11PM Eastern Standard Time. They will start shipping the week after that. 

One per household is the typical rule of thumb, unless there are leftovers.

Source:Dyzplastic

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President Obama isn’t just taking his State of the Union message on the road – he’s also taking it online.

In the latest iteration of the Obama administration’s efforts to connect to supporters via social media, the White House announced the president will participate next Monday in a Google+ ‘Hangout," a chat room-like feature of Google+ that allows users to connect with each other via video connections.

The White House pledges the president will answer “several of the most popular questions” submitted through YouTube while some questioners will be invited to participate in a live conversation on Google+.

The latest social media push follows a Twitter town hall the president held over the summer. To the disappointment of some, in that forum the president merely answered pre-selected questions from twitter users but did not respond on the social media website himself.

This time, the president’s answers will show up on a video stream hosted by Google+ while participants can comment on his answers in real time.

The White House says the upcoming forum is an example of the president’s commitment to “creating a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.” But it remains unclear exactly how the White House will select the questions the president answers.

Obama also held a similar Facebook town hall at the web giant’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California in the Spring and a YouTube town hall at the White House in February. At both events, the White House was criticized for ignoring the subject that drew by far the most queries: whether he supports legalizing marijuana.

The ‘hangout’ follows a three day, five city tour later this week during which the president will echo the themes of his State of the Union Address.

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Sometimes Google's results aren't that useful and they don't answer your question. Maybe the query is imprecise or obscure, the results are outdated or you don't have the patience to check the first 100 results to find something helpful. Asking your Twitter followers or your Facebook friends could be a great idea. Google doesn't integrate with Twitter or Facebook, but it experiments with a new feature that shows a message below the list of results: "Want to ask your friends about [your query]? Ask on Google+".


Clicking the link opens a Google+ box that already includes a message: "Hi there! I have a question about [my query]..." Edit your message, click "Ask" and the first results could show up in a few seconds in Google's notification widget.


Maybe Google+ also will include a revamped version of Aardvark and you'll be able to send your question to the right people.

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