Cyanogen's plan to offer viable alternatives to Google's stock Android apps starts with an email app. Specifically, Boxer's email app. The company best known for its alternative Android ROMs announced today that its next update, Cyanogen OS 12, will come with Boxer's software baked in as its default mail client. That should give its users something more polished than the community-built solution Cyanogen has been offering so far, and it gives it an email client that could eventually replace the Gmail app. And that's a big deal, as the company hasn't been shy about its dissatisfaction with Google's handling of Android, which has becoming increasingly tied to the search giant's services. (It even refused a buyout offer from Google.) If Cyanogen truly wants to create a more open version of Android, it'll need more partners like Boxer.

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Amazon is launching a new store section today called Amazon Exclusives that looks to highlight "up-and-coming brands." The store features products from Kickstarter successes like Jackery phone chargers, Zackees' clever cycling gloves and Olioclip phone camera lenses. The new store claims to offer "the best prices" on such items, and also includes products not born from crowdfunding. Tower's inflatable paddle board, for example, came from ABC's Shark Tank.

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It's always good news when a service that processes a lot of cash improves its security measures. PayPal, for instance, has just established a security center in Israel by acquiring a local company called CyActive. The company already has a Fraud and Risk Detection Center in Tel Aviv, but CyActive is a totally different beast: it "specializes in technology that can predict how malware will develop." It's sort of like Minority Report's PreCrime, except it uses predictive analytics instead of human precogs to foresee new cybersecurity threats. The startup's employees will now be in charge of implementing technology that will protect the payment platform from future cyberattacks.

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One of President Kaz Hirai's big "Sony One" projects was PlayStation Mobile, which offered games for both PS Vita and Android devices. That dream of cross-platform synergy is now dead, as Sony has announced it will stop publishing PS Mobile content July 15th. On September 10th the entire site will cease to exist, and previously purchased games will no longer be available for download. The shutdown only applies to PS Vita content, as Sony had already stopped publishing Android games for PlayStation Mobile last year.

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In a move of absolute ridiculousness, Turkey wants to ban Minecraft because its Family and Social Policies Ministry's deemed it too violent for kids. Yes, a game where you build fortresses and punch trees is getting called out for its content, because in Survival Mode, you have to defend yourself from the zombie-like Mobs and that sometimes means killing them. As the region's Hurriyet Daily News reports, the Ministry also says that some kids could confuse Minecraft's blocky, pixelated landscapes for the real world which would make them think that torturing animals was totally fine. Sure; okay. The reason for the outfit casting its gaze at Microsoft's $2.5 billion purchase in the first place? To see if the game encouraged violence against women. At least its heart was in the right place at the outset.

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If you're the type of man that enjoys dry feet and pants, you'd better think twice before emptying your bladder in Hamburg, Germany. Pee against a wall in the city's historic red light district and there's a good chance that your stream will come back to bite you thanks to a coat of nano-paint.

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Due to the popularity of smartphones, camera manufacturers have had to scramble trying to find ways to keep their products relevant. And Olympus is no stranger to this. Now, the company has announced its Stylus SH-2, a point-and-shoot camera that's using retro looks to, hopefully, appeal to the masses. Like they say, however, looks aren't everything. As such, Olympus is making this compact cam beautiful on the inside too, featuring a RAW capture mode, 5-axis image stabilization, WiFi and the ability to shoot 1080p video at 60 fps. Just as important, the Stylus SH-2 comes with a 16-megapixel sensor and 24x optical zoom lens (24-600mm wide-angle equivalent) -- similar to what we saw on the Stylus SH-1, which was introduced last March. It'll be available in black and silver next month for $400, while the companion carrying cases will be sold separately.

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While the FREAK security vulnerability is mainly associated with Apple's Safari and Android's stock browsers, it apparently affects Windows PC too. Thankfully, Microsoft has issued an update that will patch up the vulnerability in its SSL/TSL implementation called Schannel. As we've mentioned in the past, hackers can use the bug to force machines into loading weaker encryption that's easier to crack. It was a feature requested by the government back in '90s so it can snoop on people, which ended up propagating to modern software.

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Twitter's mobile app has seen a fair bit of newness as of late, and its latest tweak brings the Android version's profile pages in line with iOS'. What's so different? Let's start at the top. Header images and avatar photos have gotten a bump in size for starters, and, what's more, the bio has its own bit of screen real-estate now instead of being a swipe to the left. Rather than only the three most recent tweets showing, now you can scroll through an infinite amount of a user's 140-character updates too -- same goes for photos and favorites.

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Just like Intel, Apple is also pledging millions of dollars to various initiatives in an effort to make its workforce a lot more diverse than it has been these past years. When its diversity report was published in 2014, Tim Cook promised to be "innovative in advancing diversity," and now Apple's VP of Human Resources has revealed some of the company's plans. In an interview with Forbes, Denise Young Smith said Cupertino is earmarking $40 million for the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which supports students enrolled in historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The non-profit will create a database of computer science students studying at HBCUs, so Apple can offer them training, scholarship and even paid internships.

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