If You're European, Apple Now Lets You Charge Your iPhone via Micro USB [IPhone]

Now that the iPhone 4S has been shown off to borderline middling interest, Apple is quietly rolling out this little dongle that allows you to charge your phone via Micro USB. Too bad it's only in Europe (for now?).

The move follows the European Union's pushing the Micro-USB format to become a standard. Rather than redesign the iPhone, they just made a workaround. You'll likely have to pray you won't lose it, but it's something. It'll be available Oct. 14th for £8. [9to5 Mac]

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Really, HP? You're Going to Fire Your CEO Now? [Hp]

Bloomberg reports that the HP board is going to meet soon to decide whether or not to fire CEO Léo Apotheker. And I don't see how that makes matters anything but worse.

Look, we've been as critical as anyone about HP's recent maneuvers, from the TouchPad fire sale fiasco to keeping PCs at arm's length to the Autonomy acquisition. And yes, it would be negligent of the board not to at least talk about how the company ended up in such a bind. But if Apotheker goes down, he'll be the most transparent scapegoat since Bill Buckner.

As surprising and seemingly erratic as HP's actions have been over the last few months, it's important to remember who Apotheker is, and where he came from. That is to say: the guy the HP board hired in the first place. And if you know that guy, a lot of what's gone down lately makes perfect sense.

Apotheker joined HP from SAP AG, where he'd helmed one of the world's foremost enterprise software companies since 2008. He's not a hardware guy. He's not a consumer guy. He's a solid enterprise salesman who, if you're a company coming off of the shaky and occasionally sordid leaderships of Carly Fiorina and Mark Hurd, represents stability. More importantly, in a post-PC world, he gives you the chance to remake yourself in the vision of an IBM. Or an SAP.

The HP board knew that's what they were getting. And that's essentially what they got: the TouchPad debacle killed off a platform Apotheker had inherited and a market he wasn't comfortable with. Ditto the move away from PCs. And the Autonomy purchase (even though HP likely overpaid) is the company's chance to leverage Apotheker's expertise and rebuild itself into an enterprise software powerhouse. Whether any part of that strategy is right is highly debatable. And the execution has been inarguably sloppy. But I find it hard to imagine that HP's board feels blindsided.

What did they think was going to happen? They brought in a guy whose skill set made him uniquely qualified to turn HP into a company that's barely recognizable from the one we all grew up with. And if they're chalking Apotheker up to an unfortunate choice, well, just add him to the ever-longer list of bad hires. And maybe start looking at the people who keep handing contracts to disappointing CEOs. You know, themselves.

And then there's this: while Apotheker's dramatic transformation of HP may have been for the worse, he's also (ironically?) the most qualified person to run what's left. Why not give the guy a chance to prove he knew what he was doing? Who's more capable of milking every last synergy out of Autonomy? Meg Whitman's name has been floated as a possible successor, but she's every bit as detached from HP's core business now as Apotheker was when he signed on.

Give the guy a chance, HP board. No one's going to put HP-Dumpty back together again, not like it was. So you might as well stick with the guy who can make the best omelet. [Bloomberg]

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Vocre for iPhone: I Can Suddenly Understand Every Word You're Saying [IPhone Apps]

English is my first tongue, but my family doesn't have a whole lot of native speakers. So, sadly, I'll often find myself at family functions nodding politely at French jokes aimed my way. Which makes Vocre a godsend for those many awkward family situations.

Vocre is a voice-recognition app that makes it easier for two people to have a conversation across a language barrier. Kinda like having a UN translator in your hand. Plus it's powered by Nuance—which Apple recently bought—so you know it's capable. The app will prompt you to pick a gender and the languages you want translated. Then you just flip the phone and speak. You'll see what you said onscreen and can retry if it doesn't get things right. You can then hand your phone off to your otherwise unintelligible friend, and they'll get the translation both in text and in the voice of whichever gender you picked. And so on and so forth until you're done chatting. Right now you can translate between English, Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese, German, and Japanese. Pretty awesome.

It's amazing how accurate it is between statements. So long as you're not mumbling and talking at a reasonable pace, it'll pick up what you're saying even against the din of a crowded office. And it's pretty quick, too. It demonstrates that voice-recognition apps should be seeing more play, despite Apple's being slow to the party up to now.

But! The app is not without a learning curve. The UI could use some work in that swiveling the phone around between phrases caused some frustration while testing it, though the developers definitely want to upgrade to on-the-fly translations. And every single translation costs a credit. Which wouldn't be a big deal, except that one buck gives you ten credits. And those credits can go quick in any conversation. So you'll be spending much more than a dollar to get the most mileage out of it.

The Best

Fast, accurate translation

The Worst

Expensive, UI needs work

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The Crowd You're Looking At Doesn't Exist [Video]

You think you're looking at a busy urban square, filled with people milling around. You're not. This crowd never existed, and neither did the place. But the people are all real. Photographic magic.

Each photo is actually a composite of hundreds, created by photographer Adam Magyar from individual portraits raised only ten or so feet off the ground. Stitch 'em together, zoom out, and you've got what appears to be a packed town square. What a wonderfully executed and cleverly pretty illusion. [Adam Magyar via Ignant via PetaPixel]

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You Can Watch NFL Games for Free If You're a Verizon 4G LTE Customer [Android Apps]

Sweetening up the deal for their 4G customers, Verizon will let LTE users have free access to NFL Mobile, the app that lets you stream every Monday Night, Sunday Night, Thursday Night games and let you watch the Redzone channel.

That's usually 10 bucks a month. [Verizon via Android Community]

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How to Pack Your Bag When You're Walking into a Hurricane [Video]

The prudent thing to do when a hurricane's a-comin' is to run far and fast in the opposite direction. But for reporters, storm chasers, and idiots who decide to do just the opposite, the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore breaks down what you need to exist in a hurricane.

The long and short of it? Shoes. Keeping your feet dry is apparently priority number 1 (aside from not being sucked hundreds of feet into the air to a horrible death). And you need a wetsuit, since you can get hypothermia in 80-degree weather if you're constantly soaked and being beaten down by angry winds. Or you could just run away like a normal person. [Mediabistro]

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A TV That Knows When The Gun You're Waving Around Is Causing a Panic [Surveillance]

The London Riots caused so much havoc that they continue to spook British officials. So much so that they're thinking of implementing so-called "Smart CCTV" that can track potential subjects and their behavior. Cue the requisite 1984/V for Vendetta comparisons.

The way it works is it can recognize certain behavior and pinpoint where it originates. Called "trigger events," it can be something like a person breaking into a shopfront window or brandishing a pistol in public. Based on how people react—running toward or away from the action—the system can pick it up and the authorities can respond.

Surveillance technology like this sounds cool, but you can understand how it can make people nervous about how it can undermine their privacy. The system allows for video feeds to be combined across CCTVs, locked onto a specific "event," while all extraneous details would be detailed. But its still up to the authorities to determine what kind of event warrants a response. And that can get muddy really quick. [BBC]

Image Credit: yuyangc/Shutterstock

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