If you’re a follower of technology or business websites, you’ve probably heard of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a digital peer-to-peer currency famed for its anonymity, independence from centralized authority and its high value. At the time of writing, one Bitcoin, or BTC, is valued at $1000.

While Bitcoin may carry the impression of not-so-legal use such as its relation to the Silk Road as well as gambling websites, the growing popularity of Bitcoin has seen a large number of legitimate businesses opening up to the digital currency.

(Image Source: CoinDesk)

Whether it’s new enterprises looking to cater to Bitcoin enthusiasts, or already-existing businesses adapting to the market, there’s no shortage of legitimate places for you to spend your Bitcoins. Here’s a list of 20.

Recommended Reading: 10 Things You Need To Know About Bitcoins

University Of Nicosia, Cyprus

The University of Nicosia in Cyprus recently announced that they would begin accepting Bitcoins as payment for tuition and other fees. This makes the University of Nicosia the first university in the world to accept Bitcoins as payment.

BitcoinStore

BitcoinStore is an online marketplace that sells a variety of electronic gadgets, at prices cheaper than sites such as Amazon and NewEgg. BitcoinStore offers international shipping, albeit with a few exceptions that are listed in its FAQ.

BitPremier

BitPremier is a luxury Bitcoin-only marketplace, where you can find anything from high-performance sports cars to works of art and even real estate.

Gyft

Gyft lets you buy, recieve, redeem and send digital gift cards for over 200 retailers, including Amazon, Sears, Target and GameStop. The best thing? You can buy these gift cards using Bitcoins.

Coingig

Coingig is an online marketplace that conducts its transactions solely in Bitcoins. You can find everything from books to t-shirts to gift vouchers on Coingig. International shipping, as with similar online marketplaces, will depend on individual sellers.

BitFash

BitFash acts as an intermediary, allowing you to buy fashion items from Fashion21 and ASOS using Bitcoins, with more brands coming soon.

CoinMap

CoinMap is a map of more than 900 (at the time of writing) Bitcoin-friendly businesses all across the world, including restaurants, pubs, cafes and bakeries. Some examples include Pembury Tavern in London, Tabita Bakery in Mexico City, and a Subway franchise in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

PizzaForCoins

PizzaForCoins allows you to order from any nearby Domino’s, Pizza Hut or Papa Johns. Pay in Bitcoins to PizzaForCoins, and they’ll order your pizza(s) for you. PizzaForCoins is currently available for United States and Australian customers only; the United Kingdom service is currently offline, while a Canadian service is "coming soon."

the Swiss Pharmacy

The Swiss Pharmacy provides high-quality medicine, both branded and generic. The Swiss Pharmacy accepts Bitcoins alongside traditional money, and will ship worldwide, with some exceptions that are listed on the website.

Young Pioneer Tours

Young Pioneer Tours operates budget group and individual tours to North Korea (including the Rason Special Economic Zone) and other parts of the world tourists often avoid. Prices on the website are listed in Euros, but Young Pioneer Tours accepts Bitcoins.

All Things Luxury

All Things Luxury carries a large selection of jewelry, including rings, necklaces, bracelets, earrings and cuff links. Prices are not listed in Bitcoin, but you have the option of paying with Bitcoins at checkout.

Virgin Galactic

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic venture, which aims to promote space tourism, recently announced that it had begun accepting Bitcoins as payment for their suborbital space flights.

CheapAir

CheapAir recently announced that they would begin to accept Bitcoin as a way to pay for flights. CheapAir intends to eventually allow you to book hotels and flights using Bitcoin via their iOS app.

TravelForCoins

TravelForCoins acts as a middleman between you and travel sites such as Expedia; you pay in Bitcoins to TravelForCoins, who will pay for your flights using standard currency. Your tickets will be put under the names you provide to TravelForCoins.

BitcoinCommodities

BitcoinCommodities sells gold and silver coins, bars and sheets. As the name suggests, it accepts Bitcoin payments. Orders ship internationally, either from Germany or drop-shipped from the USA.

BitBrew

BitBrew sells a variety of coffees to customers all around the world, exclusively using Bitcoins. Coffees are roasted the day before delivery.

Kickass Kombat

Kickass Kombat sells Japanese martial arts weapons, clothing, DVDs, gifts and accessories. They ship worldwide, and accept payments in Bitcoin.

Nestorgames

Nestorgames is an independent board game manufacturer with a large selection of board games to choose from. Bitcoins can only be used to purchase bundles; Bitcoin purchases get a 10% discount on the price of the bundle.

BooshWorks

BooshWorks offers both discount and full-service printing, including screen, offset and wide format printing. They accept both USD and Bitcoin.

Wholly Hemp

Wholly Hemp manufacture and sell skin care products made from hemp seed oil. 25% of their proceeds go to charity. Prices are not listed in Bitcoin on the site, but you can pay using Bitcoins at checkout.

Editor’s note: This is a contributed post by Kelvin Stiles, Business Development Manager at SurveyCrest a website that offers easy and free solutions to create surveys.

Just when you think a smartphone cannot get any better, it does! We can find just about everything in a smartphone: retina displays, laser keyboards, hand gestures, inbuilt projectors and now… flexible displays. Michael wrote about this as one of the future smartphone features in a post a year ago, and today you can actually hold a flexible display smartphone in your hand.

A few tech giants have released their take on curved smartphones. Last month, Samsung became the first company to launch the world’s first flexible OLED display smartphone – Samsung Galaxy Round.

(Source: techclones.com)

In the same month, LG followed suit with its very own version, the LG G Flex, which on top of being touted the world’s first "real" curved smartphone, also has a unique self-healing capability you have to see to believe.

(Source: gadgets.ndtv.com)

"Flexible" Displays

There’s a catch. Both recently released flexible display phones are "curved" in design but don’t actually ‘flex at will’. Without the ability to bend and fold, how can they be considered flexible then?

In a literal sense, the word "display" refers to everything you see on the screen and navigate on. However in technical terms, the "display" actually refers to the electronic substances placed under the glass and plastic cover, the parts that act as the sensors.

Hence, flexible displays here refers to the organic light-emitting diode (OLED), which is made of flexible materials like plastic instead of traditional glass. The main feature of an OLED is that it produces its own light, so it doesn’t require the thick, heavy backlight that makes LCDs inflexible.

Why the need for Flexible Phones?

This is a question that many (dumbfounded) users ask and an issue hotly debated in the comments section of tech sites and forums. "Why do you need a flexible phone?" Here are three possible reasons:

1. Better Durability – Since flexible displays employ OLEDs made out of plastic, they provide more durability as compared to traditional glass displays. In other words, this reduces the chances of your smartphone display being smashed to smithereens when you drop it.

2. Lighter Weight – Did you know that plastic is lighter than glass? The atomic composition of plastic makes it relatively lighter in mass than glass of equal size. Plastic OLEDs can make the devices lighter.

3. Thinner Dimensions – Flexible displays can allow smartphone devices to be manufactured with thinner dimensions and in shapes different than the conventional rectangular screen.

Barriers in Building Flexible Phones

That said, it takes more than a flexible display to make a flexible phone. There are still a lot of technological and hardware barriers that are hindering manufacturers from designing a truly bendable or rollable smartphone.

Samsung in its ‘Analyst Day 2013’ event, revealed its plans for new devices in the near future. The illustration below outlines the plans: "curved" displays in 2013, "bended" displays next year and lastly foldable screens by 2016.

(Source: extremetech.com)

Samsung also revealed the ‘technology barriers’ that are to be surpassed in order to make foldable devices a reality. Let’s take a brief look at these technological barriers one by one.

1. Memory Scaling

Memory scaling has become difficult because recent trends in systems, applications and technology are worsening the memory system bottleneck problem. On the architectural front, energy and power consumption are the main design limiters. It is costly to scale the memory further. Newer solutions/structures of memory must be figured out to provide more flexibility to the devices.

2. Battery Rigidity Barrier

One of the most evident hurdles that smartphone manufacturers are facing is its battery design, which is unyieldingly rigid in nature. Conventional lithium ion batteries, which power today’s smartphones, are organically straight in shape don’t have a flexible alternative. Until that malleable component is found and can produce usable batteries, truly flexible phones may remain a distinct reality.

3. Circuitry Inflexibility Barrier

Similar to the battery conundrum, and almost as critical is the circuitry involved. The board on which other components fit is made of silicon which doesn’t allow for much flexibility. The challenge for manufacturers is to come up with low-cost organic alternatives to replace traditional silicon circuits.

4. Weatherproofing Barrier

Organic Light Emitting Display (OLED) is extremely sensitive to oxygen, moisture and water. The challenge for manufacturers to keep a flexible OLED display sealed off from the corrosive atmosphere while allowing it to flex is a tricky proposition.

5. Power Consumption Barrier

Since the OLED display medium requires more current as compared to the traditional liquid crystal medium, it creates a great amount of strain on the TFT circuits that drive the display media. Smartphone manufacturers will have to find smarter solutions for making the devices work with less power consumption.

Forecast of Flexible Display Market

The future of flexible display market is extremely bright, provided the mentioned hurdles are overcome by tech companies. In a recently published report by IHS on the flexible display market, it is estimated that the flexible display market will grow to $1.1 billion in 2015 and will continue to develop at an outrageous rate of 226% to $42 billion by the end of 2020.

(Source: ihs.com)

Even though flexible display smartphones have not yet achieved the desired potential, it is certain that they will soon capture the market by storm. It is estimated that total shipments of displays will reach the 6 billion mark by 2020 with global shipments of flexible displays soaring to 792 million units. This means that in 2020, flexible display market will have captured 13% of the total display market.

The Future is ‘Flexible’

Regardless of what we make of this, the next generation of smartphones is here… and is probably here to stay for good. The flexible display technology is not going to be restricted to smartphones only. Provided the manufacturers overcome the technological and hardware barriers, this technology will definitely shift to other gadgets likes tablets, notebooks, watches and even TVs.

Imagine having the power to just fold or roll away your household appliances. Now wouldn’t that be exciting?

(Source: gadgets.ndtv.com)

We can’t wait to see what is next in store for us in terms of flexible display technology. All in all, the next few years promise to be very exciting. The question here for us is: are you ready to handle the next generation of smartphones? Will you be willing to upgrade your smartphone with a bendable or rollable one in the near future?

Comment please or participate in our online survey here and tell us which smartphone manufacturer will be the first to introduce a truly flexible smartphone?

Some might remember a time when YouTube was an built-in app on iOS devices – you could play YouTube videos in the background, thereby allowing you to use other apps (or turn the screen off) while still being able to listen to the audio of the YouTube clips.

Then iOS 6 came along and YouTube was removed and became an app in the iTunes App Store – as a result, the background playback feature was also removed. On iOS 7, however, there is actually a simple workaround, and that’s exactly what we’ll be showing you in this quick tutorial today.

Recommended Reading: iOS 7: 31 Tips, Tricks And New Features You Should Know

Play YouTube In The Background On iOS 7

Instead of using the YouTube app, use Safari and navigate to any YouTube clip and hit the Play button.

Now, if you want to use other apps while having the YouTube video play in the background, just tap on the Home button to go to your homescreen.

When you’re on your homescreen, swipe up to launch the Control Center and tap on the Play/Pause button. You’ll now be able to listen to the audio of that YouTube video you selected earlier and use other apps at the same time.

You can also tap on your device’s power button to turn off the screen and still listen to the audio of that YouTube clip.

Creating a download link is usually an easy task. All we need to do is use an anchor tag <a>, and add the reference URL pointing to the file. But some file types pose a technical problem – PDF, image and text files will open in the browser instead of being downloaded when a user clicks on the relevant link(s).

In the past, complicated setups and hacks on the server side were required to download these files (PDF, image, text, etc) by force. For that reason, HTML5 has a new attribute called download, which is much easier to implement.

Recommended Reading: A Look Into: HTML5 <Article> And <Section> Elements

Using Download Attribute

The download attribute does two things: download a file by force, and rename the file with the name specified in the attribute upon downloading.

For example, we have here a PDF and an Image file that are named randomly.

 <a href="file/e4ptK9qd7bGT24e.pdf">Download PDF</a> <a href="file/KU7Ba93M7t7ghbi.jpg">Download Image</a> 

So, without the download attribute, these two files will open in the browser.

But when we add the download attribute like so:

 <a href="file/e4ptK9qd7bGT24e.pdf" download="10 Things You Should Know About Passion.pdf">Download PDF</a> <a href="file/KU7Ba93M7t7ghbi.jpg" download="wii.jpg">Download Image</a> 

The files will be downloaded and renamed, as shown in the following screenshot.

We have created a demo page for you to see this attribute in action.

• View Demo
• Download Source

Conclusion

HTML5 has introdued some new elements and attributes that make life easier for web developers. This download attribute is indeed a very handy addition. Unfortunately, the browsers are slow to catch up – it’s currently only supported on Firefox 20+, Chrome 14.0 and Opera 15.0.