CN.dart.call("xrailTop", {sz:"300x250", kws:["top"], collapse: true});In our preview of the OS X Yosemite beta today, we focused mostly on the OS-wide changes to the user interface and the new features of a few built-in apps. As happened in the transition from iOS 6 to iOS 7, though, there are plenty of other applications in Yosemite that still work like they did in Mavericks, just with a fresh coat of paint.

We've collected a few different representative examples in the photo gallery below—some of these designs completely rethink the way the original application looked (Game Center). Some of them look basically the same but compress the UI or move buttons to different places to make existing features more accessible (Maps, Preview). Still others are just the same apps with different colors (Notes).

The one class of app that remains essentially the same as before (at least of this writing) are the things in the Utilities folder, many of which even use the same "old-style" glassy icons as before. Only the Terminal and Activity Monitor get different icons at all, though the look of the apps don't change. The apps in Utilities are all, you know, utilities, so aesthetics aren't especially important there. Just know that Apple hasn't changed everything about the way Yosemite looks.

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The BBC's Alan Johnston reports on the journey so far of the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia as it is towed to Genoa for scrapping.

Warming seas are reducing the food supply for Antarctic seals, say researchers.

Warming seas are reducing the food supply for Antarctic seals, say researchers.

Whether you're still running a years-long instance of 2004's The Sims 2, complete with a family's dozens of generations babbling in Simlish while running into all matter of torture-inducing home spaces or haven't even played the game once, Electronic Arts has a giant, if ancient, freebie for you. Years after the game's "exchange" content website shuttered, the game's producer announced last week it would no longer post updates or patches for the decade-old game.

To ease the pain for all 50 players who'll never see their Radeon-related visual glitches fixed, EA gave all Sims 2 owners on the Origin PC games service a free upgrade to the game's "Ultimate Collection" version, which includes the game's eight expansion packs and nine "stuff" packs.

But what about players who didn't register the game on Origin (or, er, never bought The Sims 2 in the first place)? EA has them covered, too, because as of Wednesday, the company is now offering free downloads of The Sims 2: Ultimate Collection to all Origin members until July 31. Simply log in to Origin and use the redemption code "I-LOVE-THE-SIMS" to immediately jump into the "Apartment Life" expansion, the Ikea household pack, and everything else your dollhouse heart desires.

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Duff Watson, of Minnesota, stirring up trouble with his hand computer, no doubt. CBS Minnesota

A Minnesota man was ejected from a Southwest Airlines flight for a tweet calling a gate agent rude, reported CBS Minnesota Wednesday. After tweeting, the man was removed from the plane and stated he was "forced" to delete the tweet before he could re-board.

Duff Watson is an "A-list" passenger with Southwest, which gives him priority boarding. Watson was miffed when the agent in question told him his two children couldn't board the plane as priority passengers with him, and Watson let her know that Twitter would, in fact, be hearing about this.

"Something to the effect of 'Wow, rudest agent in Denver. Kimberly S, gate C39, not happy @SWA,'" is how Watson summarized the tweet to CBS. The family eventually boarded the plane, but according to Watson's daughter, Lucy, the agent threatened to call the cops over the tweet. Watson relayed that the agent said her safety felt threatened.

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More funerals for Israeli soldiers killed in the conflict with Palestinians have been held as air strikes continue to target Gaza.

Comcast

A California nonprofit says that a Comcast Internet service program for poor people is too difficult to sign up for, resulting in just 11 percent of eligible households in the state getting service.

Comcast had to create the $10-per-month Internet Essentials program in order to secure approval of its acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011. About 300,000 households containing 1.2 million people nationwide have gotten cheap Internet service as a result, but the California Emerging Technology Fund (CETF) complains that the signup process is riddled with problems, a charge Comcast denies.

CETF itself was created by the California Public Utilities Commission when approving the mergers of SBC-AT&T and Verizon-MCI, and its purpose was to accelerate broadband deployment for unserved or underserved populations. The group says additional requirements should be imposed on Comcast as part of its pending acquisition of Time Warner Cable.

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AFTVnews.com

Amazon released the Fire TV in April into a market already chock-full with streaming media boxes that one can attach to a television. At the same time, it filed for an "Amazon Fire" trademark and two service marks. Amazon also claims the word "Fire" itself on its long list of trademarks, and Amazon lawyers are apparently already engaged in sweeping the Web of sites that contain the mark.

The anonymous proprietor of fireTVnews.com explained on his site that Amazon has given him seven days to turn over the domain to them because it contains an Amazon trademark. He wrote:

I’ll admit, when I registered the domain, I knew there was a possibility that one day I would be contacted by Amazon’s trademark lawyers. I naively thought Amazon was nicer than your average mega corporation and registered the domain anyway. Lesson learned. It would have been nice if they gave me more than 7 days, or at least given me a way to contact them. Instead, I’m supposed to give them the domain release information through their standard ‘Contact Us’ form.

I’m just one guy with a small blog and a few loyal readers, so I wont be fighting their request. This website will continue, but under a different name and URL. I will post the new website information shortly. I hope everyone reading this will stick around and not get lost in the move.

Yesterday, the site completed a move to AFTVnews.com, gave up its Facebook page, and changed its Twitter handle as well. The news site appears to be tiny, with just 84 Twitter followers. (Twitter followers aren't lost when a handle changes.) He wrote:

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The Netherlands receives the first victims' bodies from crashed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in a solemn ceremony at Eindhoven air base.

Arturo, the polar bear dubbed 'the world's saddest animal', will be staying at his zoo in Argentina, despite a massive petition calling for him to be moved to a colder climate.

Arturo, the polar bear dubbed 'the world's saddest animal', will be staying at his zoo in Argentina, despite a massive petition calling for him to be moved to a colder climate.

More than 1,700 people have reportedly been killed in seven days as fighting in Syria intensifies.

The captured DJI Phantom drone and its cargo, held by Thai prison authorities. Saichon Srinuanchan , Bangkok Post

The Bangkok Post reports that guards at the Khao Bin Prison in Thailand took possession of what appears to be a DJI Phantom drone laden with cell phones and accessories. The drone was snagged on a tree limb inside the prison compound.

Taped to the drone were two Nokia cell phones, four SIM cards, a pair of Bluetooth devices, and headphones. Also attached to the aircraft was what appeared to be a system on a board—about the size of a Raspberry Pi computer. The gear was concealed in a plastic bottle.

In addition to its illicit cargo, the quadcopter was equipped with a GoPro video camera and a Wi-Fi signal range extender to allow the drone to be remote-controlled from a greater distance, based on analysis of the photos published by the Post.

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Paul Adams sees a Red Cross evacuation mission come under attack by local people in Gaza City's Shejaiya neighbourhood

What time is it? According to the US Patent and Trademark Office, it's iTime!

As the smartwatch market has grown with entries from Qualcomm, Samsung, and Google, Apple has remained remarkably mum on the concept, in spite of long-standing rumors hinting at a wristwatch in the works in Cupertino. On Sunday, iWatch's hopes grew further with the unveiling and approval of a new smartwatch patent filed by Apple in July, 2011.

As reported by Wired UK, the US patent describes a "wrist-worn electronic device and methods therefor," and its description certainly resembles the features users have come to expect from recent smartwatches. In particular, the section about "information exchanges" between the watch and a user's phone describes a system of notifications and on-screen controls for everything from SMS to media playback (along with the naming of compatible Apple devices like iPhones and iPods).

The patent (which never uses the term "iWatch") mentions features like gyroscopes, accelerometers, and vibrating elements, along with a variety of models, including one whose base can very clearly be removed from the wristwatch band, iPod Nano-style. This patent's unveiling comes nearly two years after Google's own "smartwatch including flip-up display" patent, but Apple beat Google to the filing punch by three months—and included a far wider range of designs and functionality (e.g. gyroscopes) to boot.

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More than 40 people were killed when a TransAsia Airways passenger plane crashed after making a failed emergency landing in Taiwan, local officials say.

It took just 20 minutes for a model drone to locate a missing elderly Wisconsin man, a feat that helicopters, search dogs, and volunteers couldn't accomplish in three days.

Just don't tell that to the Federal Aviation Administration, whose regulatory wings are already flapping about model drones.

This weekend's discovery of the 82-year-old man in an area of crops and woods comes amid a legal tussle between flight regulators and model drone operators—the latest of which coincidentally involves search-and-rescue missions.

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Millions of mayflies took to the air in Wisconsin, tricking radar into thinking it was raining

The Lumia 530. Nokia

If analytics companies are to be believed, the lowly Lumia 520 and its variants have been the most popular Windows Phone handsets ever. Today, Microsoft officially announced that phone's successor, the Lumia 530. It will come in both single- and dual-SIM variants, though it's safe to say that only the single-SIM version will end up making it to the US, and Nokia expects both to be priced at around "€85 (about $114) before taxes and subsidies."

The 530 is a somewhat cut-down version of the Lumia 630 that was introduced earlier this year, and the devices share many design elements—eye-melting neon color options, software navigation buttons rather than hardware or capacitive buttons, and no dedicated camera shutter button. Microsoft has made some changes to Windows Phone to make it easier for OEMs to put it on lightly modified Android hardware, and these two Lumias showcase those changes.

On the inside, the Lumia 530 is a combination of small upgrades and small downgrades from the 520. Both phones share the same 5MP camera and 512MB of RAM. Storage is down to 4GB (from 8GB in the 520), but the phone's microSD slot will now support cards up to 128GB in size. The resolution of the 4-inch screen increases slightly to 854×480. The 530 uses a 1.2GHz quad-core Snapdragon 200 SoC rather than the 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 in the 520, but overall performance may break roughly even since the S4's Krait CPU architecture is faster clock-for-clock than the 200's Cortex A7 architecture. Finally, the GPU takes a minor step down from the Adreno 305 GPU to the Adreno 302. New buyers will still get a solid budget handset, but current 520 users won't need to rush out to buy this one.

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