Online Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling

The Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling (MSCMHC) offers a rigorous 24 month, 60-credit, degree program that provides the educational preparation for licensure in your home state. 

The Master of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling program involves an intensive internship program, in which students are placed according to their talents and career ambitions, and mentored by New England College core faculty members.

New England College is proud of our strong history of partnering with mental health and counseling organizations. NEC serves as an educator of organization staff, an employer of adjunct faculty, and the program and organizations work together to benefit all parties in developing clinical internship placements.

New England College

Masters of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling

Program Mission

The mission of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program is to provide high quality graduate level education to ensure the development of highly qualified clinical mental health counselors. 

The program pursues this through the careful integration of scholarship and clinical practice combined with focusing critical attention on the professional and ethical development of each student. 

The institution recognizes the importance of ensuring that students who plan to graduate in order to pursue a clinical mental health counseling practice achieve the academic, practical, and developmental assets necessary to be highly successful within the field of mental health counseling.

We understand that the working professional cannot always attend face-to-face residencies, so we are establishing our program with synchronous sessions to fulfill residency requirements. In addition, you will create networking opportunities and share best practices with peers across the country.

Apply Now Application Requirements

OUR PROGRAM OUTCOMES WERE DEVELOPED TO MEET CACREP STANDARDS

COURSES

LICENSURE

Admissions Requirements

Online application

Official college transcript(s)

Resume

One letter of recommendation

750 Word personal statement

Contact

Casey Walker, Graduate Admission Counselor

School of Graduate and Professional Studies

603.428.2357

cwalker@nec.edu

Online Graduate School Reflection Post

I’ve previously written about how I was applying to become a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I am in fact now a graduate student at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro pursuing a Master’s Degree in Peace & Conflict Studies. I completed my first course on July 20th. 

I am overjoyed that in a fairly difficult course I was able to successfully obtain an A, a 97% score. 

I got a perfect score on my first paper and on my final paper but I missed a few points on my second paper. 

The purpose of this post is to talk about my initial experiences as an online graduate student because it’s very interesting and I actually quite like it despite the reservations many people have about doing graduate school online.

What My First Course Was About:

The course was on what I personally want to specialize in the real world, the intersection of religion and Peace & Conflict. I submitted three papers during the course and each of them talked about unique and distinct conflicts. 

My first paper was about the role of moderate Muslims and media when it comes to dealing with Al-Shabaab in Kenya and Somalia, my second paper discussed the possibility of Roman Catholics stepping up and becoming serious peace-builders and a force for justice in Nicaragua, and my final paper which I submitted late Thursday night was about how the United States could and should act to empower moderate Muslims in Xinjiang, China to combat the influence of Islamic extremists upon the Uighur nationalist movement and to begin to walk towards peace between the Uighurs and the Han in that part of China and beyond while also acknowledging the need for serious change from the Chinese government in terms of how they’ve treated both Xinjiang and the Uighurs themselves.

I have begun a blog exclusively dedicated to Peace and Conflict Studies and on that blog, I’ll be posting each of the papers I wrote since I actually really liked each of them. I adored this course and it gave me exactly what I wanted from graduate school: real feedback about my writing style and guidance towards how to become a better scholar of Peace and Conflict Studies.

What It Seems To Take To Succeed In Online Graduate School:

I’ll be doing reflections like this every semester and I’ll be including a section just like this one in each of those posts. Some things to consider when reading this particular post: I just took a summer course which lasted 5 weeks. 

Those types of courses are in a sense really brutal because everything happens really quickly. 

This wasn’t my first summer course but it was my first graduate school course and my first summer graduate course which was really useful for two reasons: it demonstrated to me if no one else that I actually have what it takes to succeed in this program, and it showed me that I can handle even high intensity and high-speed courses. Other people told me I could and my university obviously believed in me but that doesn’t mean I was as sure as they were. 

This course ended up giving me a lot of confidence in that regard.

In my opinion, to succeed in online graduate school, you have to be a self-starter. If you have a tough time motivating yourself without the usual pressures of going to a classroom and sitting in front of a professor and having exams, you’re going to have a really hard time in an online graduate school course. Also, it’s worth noting that even if online graduate school sounds super chill and relaxing to you because you think there’ll be no meetings or no exams, there are professors and courses who give typical exams and have regular sessions of class just through the internet. 

My course was a paper and participation course with no regularly scheduled meetings or exams but that is not always the case and I’ve taken other online classes as an undergraduate student where we did have meetings scheduled in advance that were mandatory and where we took typical exams instead of relying on papers to assess our understanding of the material.

You need to have excellent time management skills to succeed in online graduate school as well. My course’s final assignment was a 10-15 page paper which as someone who studied history as an undergraduate is not a big deal, but the course lasted 5-6 weeks and there were 2 other assignments before that that were 5-7 pages long each. 

This adds up quickly and it’s easy for someone who lacks time management skills to lose track of when what is due and not succeed in an assignment like this due to that.

The next post I do like this will be a lot longer than this one because I’m taking 3 courses in the Fall. I look forward to taking them and hopefully doing even better in them than I did in this course. I’d love to respond to questions in the comment section and to have a neat conversation about online graduate school with anyone who wants to know more about my experience thus far! If you want to hear more from me in general or about Peace & Conflict Studies specifically check out the aforementioned blog and come on down to my Discord! I’d love to chat with you about anything you feel like discussing.

How to Use the Blacklisted VLC App on Your Huawei Smartphone

VideoLAN and Huawei are in a fight. So much so, that you can no longer grab the ever-popular, feature-packed VLC media player app from the Google Play Store on Huawei smartphones Video LAN’s nuclear option. But you can still download the VLC .APK directly from VideoLAN, and you should... with a few adjustments.

The reason for VideoLAN’s self-blacklisting is simple, according to company president Jean-Baptiste Kempf:

“Huawei devices are now forbidden to download VLC. We’re fed up with their OS breaking VLC all the time. Huawei basically kills VLC when the screen is shutting down. So that kills VLC when it plays audio in background.”

Android Police’s Ryan Whitwam notes that this “obnoxiously aggressive app management” doesn’t seem to be a problem if you’re running at leastversion 5.1 of the company’s EMUI skin on Android Nougat. If you’re using an older version of EMUI, which enough people seem to be (and then blast the VLC app with negative reviews on Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store), your movie-watching or music-listening experience is going to be hampered by your smartphone’s default settings.

While VideoLAN works with Huawei to solve this problem, there are a few workarounds you can use to watch or listen to movies and music without any issues.

First, you’ll need to visit VideoLAN’s website on your Huawei device, download the VLC .APK, and open it to sideload it on to your device. You might have to first allow installations from “Unknown Sources” in the Security section of your Settings app.

After that, you might have to do a bit of digging for the other settings you’ll want to tweak:

Go to Settings > Battery, tap the three-dot icon, tap on Battery optimization, select “all apps” from the drop-down menu, find VLC, and switch it to “Don’t optimize.”

As this Reddit commenter notes, this list of apps might also be buried under Settings > Apps > Settings (the gear icon) > Special access > Ignore Optimizations. (You’ll find a screenshot walkthrough here.)

It’s also possible that your device has a list of “protected apps” in the “Power saving” section of its Phone Manager app or the Battery or Battery Manager section of its Settings app.

Again, I don’t have a Huawei smartphone, but that probably wouldn’t help out much given the different versions of EMUI people run on different Huawei smartphones. In general, you’re going to want to look for any way you can disable your smartphone’s power- or battery-optimization features for apps, and any way you can whitelist or “protect” specific apps from Huawei’s automatic shutdowns.

Above all else, make sure your device is running the latest version of Android and Huawei’s EMUI. That might fix your VLC issues outright while you wait for VLC and Huawei to work on an official fix or, at minimum, an in-app prompt that lets you adjust your smartphone’s battery settings when you first load VLC.

battery settings when you first load VLC.

 

Appreciating Classical Music: Where to Start

Wednesday 5:37pm

New App Tracks WWU’s Late Night Shuttle

by Alex Van Valkenburgh, WWU Office of Communications and Marketing Intern

No more will students have to ask themselves the age old question: Where is the late night shuttle?

Western’s partnership with Ride Systems is providing students the ability to track the late night shuttle though an app.

This past January, the two shuttles were equipped with GPS monitoring equipment. Students can download the app that shows them the late-night shuttle’s real-time location.

The app provides minute by minute updates on where the bus is and when it will arrive. It can be downloaded for free from the IOS and Android app stores. Western adopted the Ride Systems app to make catching the late night shuttle more convenient.

“Without the app, the students can only guess where the shuttle is,” Kay McMurren, Western’s Student Transportation Program support supervisor, said. “With the app, they can see exactly when it is coming.”

The Ride Systems app will provide students peace of mind as students will no longer have to wait outside in the dark or the cold. 

The app will also inform students if the shuttle has been canceled due to weather conditions.

The program costs $5,700 per year, said McMurren. The partnership does not only benefit the students, it also provides Western the ability to electronically tally the number of riders embarking and disembarking the bus at each stop. 

Which provides the university with data on the late night shuttle’s usage.

Ride Systems provides services to more than 100 universities and colleges across the United States

Here Is the Absolute Best Opportunity to Buy Restoration Hardware Stock

Shares of Restoration Hardware (NYSE:RH) have been on fire. Restoration Hardware stock is up 59% so far this year and 85% over the past 12 months.

It’s got many investors sitting with the uncomfortable feeling of “FOMO” or fear of missing out. Now that it’s pulling back, some are wondering if it’s a worthwhile buy.

This stock is akin to a rollercoaster though. At one point, Restoration Hardware went from $100 in the fall of 2015 to about $25 just nine months later. If that doesn’t scare investors, I don’t know what will.

A Look at Restoration Hardware

However, a key thing happened when shares took that massive dip. Rather than shaking up the C-suite or making a big change, Restoration Hardware doubled down. Instead of CEO Gary Friedman stepping down from his role, he stepped up and bought some stock.

Specifically, Friedman slugged up more than 32,000 shares near $27.50. That was in July 2016. While the next few quarters had their ups and downs with shares climbing toward $40 before revisiting the mid-$20s, the stock had tripled a year after Friedman’s purchase.

That didn’t stop the CEO though. He gobbled up stock three more times in 2017, paying up to ~$97 in December. Who averages up when they’re near a quadruple? Someone who knows good times are still coming.

So far this stud has held steady in 2018. Shares are now trading near $136 and carry a 52-week high of $164.49. Those highs represent an almost six-fold return from Friedman’s 2016 purchase.

So investors’ golden indicator? Buy Restoration Hardware stock when Gary Friedman buys.

Valuing Restoration Hardware Stock

So what’s up with Restoration Hardware anyway? Shares trade at about 20 times this year’s earnings, but some investors will find that too expensive for their tastes. Others may like it for its growth and disregard the valuation.

Analysts only expect sales growth of 4.6% this year and 8% next year. The acceleration in growth from 2018 to 2019 is attractive, but its earnings growth shouldn’t be ignore.

Estimates call for 119% growth this year and 13% next year. However, given that earnings estimates for next year have increased more than 13% over the past 90 days, they still may be conservative.

Margins are up significantly, with gross margins improving by several hundred basis points year over year. Plus, the tax overhaul should help Restoration Hardware’s results. Here’s the thing though, it won’t just help Restoration Hardware’s bottom-line results with its business operations. More importantly, it will help its customers.

Have you ever shopped at a Restoration Hardware? It’s exciting and depressing all at once given the price tags. But as the wealthy get wealthier, they’ll need to refurnish their current homes or furnish their new ones. Restoration will be there to help and investors will reap the reward.

For perspective, just look at how companies like Ferrari (NYSE:RACE) or Toll Brothers(NYSE:TOL) are doing. They will suffer when the economy slows down, but for now, the good times just keep on rolling.

Trading Restoration Hardware Stock

Click to Enlarge

Because Restoration Hardware doesn’t have the lowest valuation, a pullback wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Specifically, I’d love for a shot in the $100 to $110 area. For starters, this was a big breakout level (blue line) for Restoration Hardware back in June. So a retest and hold would actually be pretty bullish.

There’s also strong, multi-year trend-line support that could come into play. However, if RH stock doesn’t pull back soon, this level may play a role in the $120s or higher in the not-too-distant future. 

Finally though, both the 100-day and 200-day moving averages are in this area and should act as support as well.

That’s the longer-term setup for more conservative Restoration Hardware bulls. The more aggressive and short-term trader has a sort of falling wedge setup here (purple lines).

After pulling back from $160, Restoration Hardware stock has been cascading lower in a very orderly fashion. So long as it stays above this wedge, bulls can play it from the long side. They can perhaps consider using the 50-day moving average as a stop-out point.

Bret Kenwell is the manager and author of Future Blue Chips and is on Twitter @BretKenwell. As of this writing, Bret Kenwell held no position in any of the aforementioned securities.

Where is Apple's innovative iPad, MacBook Pro hardware to rival Microsoft's Surface?

Despite getting lighter, thinner and faster, Apple's iPad tablets and MacBook notebooks haven't dabbled into entirely new desktop computing form factors and experimental hardware concepts the way Microsoft has with its Surface business segment —and for good reason. 

Here's a look at why.

An unhinged Surface PC reflects the tech media's enrapturement with impractical, unsuccessful experimentation

Apple and the Case of the Conventional Computer

Apple's strategies behind its iPad and MacBook business segments are often maligned by bloggers who question both the company's engineering prowess and its creative, innovative spirit. 

The worn-out cliche that "Apple isn't innovative anymore" is largely grounded in the idea that Apple's modern computing offerings are established and practical, rather than radical amusements that excite the media. 

This is castigated as "evolutionary, not revolutionary" by people who have apparently never experienced the disruption of actual revolutions.

A considerable part of Apple's modern success is rooted in the fact that it perfects products that have already proven successful, rather than spraying out an array of wild concepts in the hope that some might stick. Microsoft, Google and even Samsung lack any real, established success in hardware computing products comparable to the volumes of iPads and Macs that Apple sells every quarter. 

Two decades ago, Apple's hardware business was about as desperate as companies like Microsoft, Google and Samsung are today. That's why Steve Jobs pushed his iMac team to create something whimsical enough to stand out. In fact, many of the entirely new and somewhat risky product introductions of that era were required because Apple didn't have a solid and mature base of users anywhere close to what it has now. 

Steve Jobs turned heads with flashy computers, but flash didn't always materialize in commercial success

Unrestrained experimentation resulted in some hit Apple products (like iMac), but also created a series of expensive failures. The PowerMac G4 Cube, Xserve and Mac mini all found fans but not enough buyers to sustain their continued advancement. More recently, the boldest PC jump Apple has attempted similarly turned out to be regarded as a flop: the cylindrical Mac Pro. 

As it turned out, core Mac Pro buyers really wanted an evolution of the tower product they were already familiar with, not a flashy new revolution with the ability to excite media personalities—whose job is to be excited about feature-flash and specification sizzle, rather than to do actual productive work.

Apple and the Creative Duress of Extraordinary Scrutiny

At the same time, Apple also faces extraordinary media scrutiny that its peers simply do not. Microsoft Surface has suffered through major reliability issues since its release. 

Google has affixed its brand to generations of tablets that were effectively dysfunctional. Samsung recently struggled through the worst product disaster (and botched response) to ever hit a tech company. Yet all of these major issues were either ignored by the tech media or excused with elaborate explanations of why they wouldn't really matter in the long run.

In stark contrast, when an obscure firmware bug caused new MacBook Pro models to overcompensate for rising processor temperatures, non-engineer YouTube personalities and random Internet bloggers weighed in with comments that instantly jumped to the conclusion that Apple had lazily slapped new Intel processors into an old MacBook chassis, resulting in a simplistic "defective by design" overheating issue. In reality, the problem was solved within a week with a software patch. 

Nobody seemed to recall that virtually every Intel chip deals with various "errata" bugs, most of which can't simply be fixed with a software update. Even more curiously, the entire planet seemed to have collectively forgot that Intel, AMD and ARM were all just hit by a huge wave of vulnerabilities within the last year due to the nature of speculative execution methods they employ.

Shouldn't the sharpest silicon minds on earth "have known about these bugs" before they began trickling out back in 2011? Nobody asked that, but there are plenty of people insisting that Apple "should have known" about the recent flaw in MacBook Pro thermal management firmware. 

And unlike Apple's new MacBook Pro fix, there's no simple patch for Meltdown and Spectre that restores things back to normal. The solution is only to turn off affected branch speculation features and perform "site isolation," both of which can impact performance on PCs, servers and netbooks regardless of their operating system.

When the entire industry suffers from a mistake in a finished product or a component, it's simply a matter of scrambling to fix it. When Apple discovers a flaw, it's time to wag fingers and prattle on about how mistakes should never be made in the production of expensive, premium hardware. Unless its a super expensive Intel processor, or a Tesla, or Google Pixel, in which case it's a sort of "locker room talk," where privileged affluent people can't be expected to answer for their actions or performance.

Why doesn't Apple try new things, like Microsoft?

Apple's computing hardware is frequently compared against Microsoft's Surface segment. In 2012, Microsoft launched Surface as a two pronged mobile PC concept, one using a conventional Intel processor (Surface Pro), and one using ARM chips (Surface RT), somewhat similar to Apple's approach with iPad. The latter turned out to be a huge mistake, as Microsoft marketed essentially a lower-powered ARM tablet as a Windows device, albeit one that couldn't run most Windows software. 

Microsoft doubled down on evolutionary enhancements to the Surface Pro until 2015, when it launched a more conventional Surface Book laptop and rebranded an acquired digital whiteboard as Surface Hub. It then launched Surface Studio (a mini PC attached to a large, pivoting touch screen) and last year an even more mundane Surface Laptop. It most recently launched Surface Go, a mini laptop, to round out its veritable explosion of creative PC innovation on the level of HP.

Microsoft now sells six different major computing device form factors; Apple only has ten different basic models of Macs and iPads, despite being in the computing game decades longer than Microsoft. Samsung actually sells more PC, netbook and tablet forms than Apple. Before giving up on tablets and Chromebook Pixel, Google basically matched Apple's product lineup. HP, Lenovo and others have similarly wide ranges of products for sale. Yet all of these competitors have actual sales that are a fraction of Apple's revenues. 

Why isn't Apple rapidly sprouting out new form factors? in part, Apple isn't wildly experimenting because it already knows what people really want. That understand keeps evolving with Apple's Mac and iPad product lineup. 

Revolutionary Evolution

Consider Macs. When Microsoft announced its intentions for Surface PCs, Apple was building a 13, 15 and 17 inch MacBook Pro, a 13 inch MacBook and an 11 inch MacBook Air. Rather than speculatively creating new products people ultimately wouldn't buy, Apple refined its offerings based on what people were actually buying. That meant discontinuing the large, heavy 17 inch MacBook Pro and doubling down on light, thin portables that were.

Despite the braying donkeys that endlessly hee-haw about how stupid Apple is for making laptops that are light and thin rather than packed with intercoolers and video-gaming GPUs, the result has been that Apple now sells more laptops than it ever has. 

Pundits criticized new MacBook Pros as being too light and thin, despite being the world's most popular premium notebooks

If you ask engineers or marketing people or anyone else in the real world about important factors to consider in buying a laptop, they will pretty quickly get around to the point where they tell you that having a large display or desktop-class power is far less important than being able to carry it around without their back and neck hurting. 

In 2016, when Apple "revolutionized" its MacBook Pro lineup to be nearly as light and thin overall as its extremely popular MacBook Air, tech media and related punditry honked disapprovingly like a field of angry Canadian Geese with nothing on their schedule apart from inhaling grass, pooping on everything and aggressively attacking anything that dare cross them. People don't wan't light and thin notebooks, they insisted, they want 32GB of RAM to virtualize multiple instances of Windows, in a large heavy frame that is neither light nor thin. 

Many of the same voices have insisted that what people really want is a huge touch screen desktop (Surface Studio) or a laptop that detaches into thick tablet and a base with a GPU in it. Despite all this confident insistence on what people really want, we have the results from a democratic vote where people cast ballots in the form of dollars. Guess who people elected to build their portable computers? It wasn't Microsoft. 

In fact, across the last four years (2014-2017) and the first quarter of 2018, Apple's sales of increasingly light and thin MacBooks and MacBook Pros, iPad and iPad Pros, and its desktop offerings centered around iMac have resulted in sales of over $196 billion. Over the same period of Microsoft's entire pantheon of Surface-branded devices, it has collected just over $16 billion—at far lower operating margins due to its dramatically lower sales volumes and higher return rates. 

The short answer to why Apple isn't acting like Microsoft is that it doesn't need to and wouldn't want to. Apple isn't desperately looking for a hardware hit. It's perfecting a game it's been winning for over a decade. Nobody else, from PC volume leaders Lenovo and HP, to mobile volume leaders like Samsung, experience anything comparable to the success Apple has had in perfecting and refining its tablets, notebooks and desktops.

Apple is trying new things, they're just successful

While Apple hasn't radically remixed its hit form factors, the company also isn't just conservatively selling slightly polished versions of yesterday's technology. Its iPads and Macs employ new innovations ranging from custom high performance SSD controllers to advanced displays with ambient-aware color management. 

Apple pulled off porting its desktop OS to mobile, lightweight ARM hardware two years before Microsoft and managed to profitably sustain its iPad business across the five years since Microsoft gave up on RT, without destroying its conventional Mac business. Outside the largely standardized form factors of mobile, laptop and desktop computing, there's something else that Apple is experimenting in that is wildly more successful than anything Microsoft has done with its Surface brand

Yet outside the largely standardized form factors of mobile, laptop and desktop computing, there's something else that Apple is experimenting in that is wildly more successful than anything Microsoft has done with its Surface brand.

This performance is hidden inside Apple's Other Hardware segment, which includes HomePod, Apple TV, Apple Watch, AirPods and Beats. These specialized computers that drive personal entertainment, home audio and wearable technology have excelled in markets that other PC and mobile vendors (inclining Microsoft, Google and Samsung) have failed miserably. 

Apple's sales of Other Hardware have absolutely skyrocketed over the past four years, growing from $8.2 billion in 2014 to $14.3 billion last year. Over the same four years and a quarter noted above for Microsoft's Surface and Apple computers, Other Hardware has sold $49 billion worth of "less conventional computing." That's three times the revenues of Microsoft's entire Surface business over the same period.

Apple's Other Hardware is already far bigger than Surface (and growing)

And while Surface has stagnated around $1 billion in quarterly sales, Apple's Other Hardware has surged into a $4 to $5 billion quarterly enterprise. Almost nobody talks about how successful Apple's experimental computing form factors are in home and wearables. Instead, we have regular reports from sites like the Verge, where Tom Warren recently congratulated Microsoft for maintaining Surface as a "billion dollar business" quarterly.

Warren wrote, "Surface revenue has jumped 25 percent year over year this quarter to $1.1 billion, 'driven by strong performance of the latest editions of Surface' says Microsoft."

Actually, what Microsoft stated in its earning reports was that "Surface revenue increased $237 million or 25 percent, driven by strong performance of the latest editions of Surface against a low prior year comparable." It's pretty solidly disingenuous to edit a corporate quote to make things look rosier than they really are, but that's what Warren chose to do here. 

The truth is that Surface sales aren't really growing at all. They've been stranded as a "billion dollar business" over the last four years. New product releases and expanded availability isn't creating a growing user base nor new revenues or profits. Surface is stagnant, and a "billion dollar business" is not a great place to be stranded, considering that it costs real money to develop, maintain and build those devices. That's revenues, not profits. Surface was "a billion dollar business" when RT was losing a billion dollars. 

It's noteworthy that Apple's iPad has been maligned for not growing despite being at least a "four billion dollar business" quarterly, while Macs hover around being a "six billion dollar business" quarterly. Why are Apple's sales of ten billion dollars worth of conventional computers each quarter an unimpressive figure, while Microsoft's stagnant single billion a cause for celebration and fawning approval?

And why are Microsoft's experimental computing concepts involving new shapes of Windows PCs "innovative" despite not expanding actual sales across years, while Apple's branches into home and wearables are considered barely worth mentioning despite huge new gains and regular sales volumes and revenues well beyond those of Microsoft Surface? It's hard to say what these pundits are thinking. 

But the bottom line is: if you want to see Apple doing creative, innovative computing form factors, look beyond the stagnant PC business and note that Apple is alone in successfully selling wearables, luxury-class home audio and other novel, futuristic shapes of applied computing devices. And it's pretty clearly just getting started.

Google takes on Yubico and builds its own hardware security keys

Google today announced it is launching its own hardware security keys for two-factor authentication. 

These so-called Titan Security Keys will go up against similar keys from companies like Yubico, which Google has long championed as the de facto standard for hardware-based two-factor authentication for Gmail and other services.

The FIDO-compatible Titan keys will come in two versions. One with Bluetooth support for mobile devices and one that plugs directly into your computer’s USB port. In terms of looks and functionality, those keys look quite a lot like the existing keys from Yubico, though our understanding is that these are Google’s own designs.

Unsurprisingly, the folks over at Yubico got wind of today’s announcement ahead of time and have already posted a reaction to today’s news (and the company is exhibiting at Google Cloud Next, too, which may be a bit awkward after today’s announcement).

“Yubico strongly believes there are security and privacy benefits for our customers, by manufacturing and programming our products in USA and Sweden,” Yubico founder and CEO Stina Ehrensvard writes, and goes on to throw a bit of shade on Google’s decision to support Bluetooth.

“Google’s offering includes a Bluetooth (BLE) capable key. While Yubico previously initiated development of a BLE security key, and contributed to the BLE U2F standards work, we decided not to launch the product as it does not meet our standards for security, usability and durability. 

BLE does not provide the security assurance levels of NFC and USB, and requires batteries and pairing that offer a poor user experience.”

It’s unclear who is manufacturing the Titan keys for Google (the company spokesperson didn’t know when asked during the press conference), but the company says that it developed its own firmware for the keys. 

And while Google is obviously using the same Titan brand it uses for the custom chips that protect the servers that make up its cloud, it’s also unclear if there is any relation between those.

No word on pricing yet, but the keys are now available to Google Cloud customers and will be available for purchase for anyone in the Google Store, soon. Comparable keys tend to sell for around $20 to $25.

6 paid iPhone apps you can download for free on July 25th

If you still have any space left in your iPhone or iPad after installing all the great apps we’ve been showing you lately, you’ll be happy that a fresh new roundup is here to showcase the day’s best paid iOS apps on sale for free. We’ve got six fresh apps on sale for you to check out on Wednesday, and there are also still a few freebies in yesterday’s post if you missed it.

This post covers paid iPhone and iPad apps that have been made available for free for a limited time by their developers. BGR is not affiliated with any developers. 

There is no way to tell how long they will be free. These sales could end an hour from now or a week from now — obviously, the only thing we can guarantee is that they were free at the time this post was written. If you click on a link and see a price listed next to an app instead of the word “get,” it is no longer free. 

The sale has ended. If you download the app anyway, you will be charged by Apple. Subscribe to our feed to be notified as soon as these posts are published, and you’ll avoid missing the sales we cover.

Wordd – Dictionary

Normally $0.99.

TFW, TMI, TIL, TLDR, FTFO, DAE, ELI5, FTFY, HIFW, ICYMI, IMHO, JSYK, MIRL, NSFL If you didn’t know the meaning of any of the above, you should download Wordd right now!

Wordd is an iOS app designed to let users quickly look up definitions for words, acronyms, abbreviations, and slang. 

The app displays official definitions as well as entries from Urban Dictionary users, making it very useful for looking up slang and trendy abbreviations such as TIL, TLDR, NSFW… etc.

Features include:

– Shows both the official definition and user generated definitions from Urban Dictionary are shown (if they exist) when a word is searched.

– Tap on the searched word to have a sexy robot read it out loud.

– Shake the device or tap the random icon to search for a random word.

– Automatically get similarly spelled words if incorrect spelling is detected.

– Automatically get synonyms after word definitions if they are found.

– History Tab which allows users to access previously searched words! (Pro)

– Shake for random SAT word. (Pro)

– Shake for random Urban Dictionary word. (Pro)

Download Wordd – Dictionary

let’s led – led banner app

Normally $0.99.

Let’s Led turns your iphone/ipad into an ticker display. a time clock, and with over 100 symbol, you can send any message you want.

Download let’s led – led banner app

Barcode

Normally $1.99.

Barcode is the fastest, most precise and most user-friendly QR reader and barcode scanner for iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch. It’s from the makers of the award winning ProCamera app – the photographers’ app – and it offers the same level of sophistication and quality. 

Download it today for free.

Use Barcode for pure recognition, for price comparison with Amazon, or instantly browse the web for the scanned information. Use its ability to directly utilize the data of any code you scan: you can add calendar events to your calendar, vCard information to your address book, or open maps to view a location – all with just one tap. You can also easily share the scan results on Twitter and Facebook or via mail and text.

HOW IT WORKS

Open the app and simply point your device at the code – done! Fully automatic recognition.

Barcode will then offer appropriate actions according to the content:

– Contacts: add new contact or add individual fields to existing contacts

– Call phone number

– Add event to Calendar

– Copy to clipboard

– Open location in Maps

– Open URL

– Open YouTube link

– Open iTunes link

– Open App Store link

– Call or send SMS to a phone number

– Send email

– Display WiFi credentials: Copy & Paste SSID, network type, and password to iOS Settings App

– Display EAN or ISBN: Search products in Amazon or web (opens in Safari/Chrome)

– Embedded Facebook integration: Post to wall

– Embedded Twitter integration: Send Tweets

On devices with flash, the app provides a torch light with adjustable intensity.

You can even define a custom URL action to use this app for your own special purpose.

BARCODES SUPPORTED

Unlike competing apps, this scanner can scan ALL common kinds of codes reaching from the well-known QR codes, AZTEC, EAN-8, EAN-13, UPC-E, UPC-A, ISBN-10, ISBN-13, I-25, CODE39 (3of9), CODE128, to Data Matrix codes!

Download Barcode

Coyn

Normally $1.99.

Coyn — Simple, Secure, and Stylish way to manage your cash balance. Introducing the new feature: Coyn Share.

• Manage your money like it’s no one else’s business.

• A brand new experience to manage your daily expenses.

• Be the only one who tracks your cash expenditures and earnings.

• Traveling a lot? No problem! use Coyn to track all your cash expenditures and focus on your adventures!

• Never lose track of where and how you spent your cash

• Improve your financial wellness by defining budget and meeting the goals

– Use “Coyn Pin” feature to pin categories that are important to you and have them on you main screen to help you stay on budget

– Premium users to have Unlimited Accounts to manage their cash balance

– 3D Touch feature allowing users to add expense/earning quickly and also see the balance instantly

– Secure your Coyn using your fingerprint

Use Coyn Share to:

– Manage expenses from your road trip with friends

– Report your business expenditures to your boss

– Pay your electricity/rent to your roommate

– Split bills at the restaurant

– or simply pay your friend for that cold beer!

-“Keep your cash and your Coyn in your pocket.”

Simplicity:

Coyn is all about efficiency. We spent days and nights testing the usability of Coyn so that you can experience the unique user-interface and enjoy managing your cash. Simply swipe up to add expenses and swipe down to add income!

Privacy:

Coyn respects your privacy and will never allow your data to be posted to any websites, bank accounts, or cloud services. We don’t require you to log in or add your bank accounts. With Coyn you can focus on saving money and being on top of your cash expenditures and earnings and stop worrying about privacy and accounts FOREVER!

Personalize:

Coyn is the most powerful tool for anyone who uses cash for daily expenses or even has cash incomes (gift cards, pocket money, etc.). It helps you to track your cash activities and keep the records only to yourself.

If you travel with cash or want to track business and personal expenses Coyn would be your best friend!

In our newest version we introduced “Coyn Shop”. Everyday we hand pick best products from Amazon (more stores and resources coming soon) tailored to our users’ taste using our smart builtin Ai. Tap on Coyn Shop inside your Coyn app and discover amazing deals every day.

Emojis are here and are taking over Coyn’s categories! Now it’s time to personalize your cash expenditures’ categories using your favorite emojis and personal touch to them

Download Coyn

Wallpaper For Harry Potter

Normally $0.99.

Wallpaper For Harry Potter

Here you will find fan art, pictures, paintings and photo to make your home and lock screen shine!

We choose only high-quality wallpapers to fit perfectly on your retina display. HD backgrounds are optimized for all iPhone and iPad devices.

Highlights:

– Optimized function of Recommended Wallpapers.

– Simple functionality to maximize your browsing experience

– Awesome photo filters to customize your wallpapers to place on the photos to make them entirely your own!

– Integrated intelligent filters

– Save your wallpapers directly to the camera roll.

Download Wallpaper For Harry Potter

Wunderverse

Normally $3.99.

“Wonderful for the imagination” – AppAdvice

“If you haven’t heard of Wunderverse, now is as good a time as ever to check it out.” — TouchArcade

Wunderverse is a place for endless adventure. Out here you can explore and create unlimited interactive adventure tales in a fun, new environment made for your imagination.

– A complete platform for interactive storytelling adventure on iOS and Mac

– Collect and explore adventures written and imagined by others

– Create your own absorbing, interactive adventures through a new form of storytelling

– Take advantage of a rich rules system with over 75 unique Events, Outcomes and Conditions, plus unlimited Skills, Abilities, and more for you to weave player chance and choice into every adventure you create.

– Imagine untold places, characters, and objects for players to discover through an open storytelling environment

– Share adventures with friends to explore

– Publish your adventures for everyone in the Wunderverse to play!

Wunderverse was designed as a way for anyone to play, create, and share exciting adventure tales with untold places to discover, characters to meet, mysteries to solve, and treasures to find.

No programming skills are needed to create and enjoy your own adventures in Wunderverse. Through a fun and versatile rules system and an open narrative environment you can set up endless obstacles and challenges for players to overcome as they explore your stories — all based on the actions players take, what they are carrying, their current conditions, their skills and abilities, random chance, and a myriad of other possibilities that make going on quests so much fun.

Currently, there are eight known worlds in the Wunderverse where exciting adventures can be created, shared and enjoyed. These include medieval times, ancient ruins, 40’s crime noir, a post-apocalyptic future, atomic space, a huge city, and more. And the Wunderverse is a big constellation! Diverse and interesting new worlds are bound to be discovered soon.

What are you waiting for!? Come explore in the Wunderverse!

Download Wunderverse

Tags: appsale