June 25, 2011

Facebook App that Notify Users for Malicious Content

At a time when the virtual space, especially social networks are rife with spam attacks, and hackers on the loose, an attempt by a bunch of students surely seems to be a force to reckon with.

Students belonging to the University of California’s graduate class, Md. Sazzadur Rahman and Ting-Kai-Huang, and a company run by the school’s alumnus, put their heads together and developed a free Facebook application called MyPageKeeper.org, which the founders claim is capable of detecting spam, malware that are found on the walls, and news feeds of the user’s Facebook account. The app, according to the founders aims at delivering real-time protection from viruses, spam to the users. Web protection service, StopTheHacker.com encouraged the construction of the app.

The recent spate of malware attacks on Facebook, and other web domains have given more than enough reasons for attempts like these. Facebook, at present has over a staggering 700 million members, and miscreants have found it to be a place where it was easy to target people into letting spam into their profiles. Contradicting this, MyPageKeeper.org once installed into one’s profile, begins actively scanning the user’s wall posts, news feeds to see if any malicious content was posted. If found any, the app would immediately notify the user of the same and prompt him to remove the malicious content. The app, for now can be downloaded for free off www.MyPageKeeper.org. Although just recently started, the app already has won the confidence of several users.

June 24, 2011

Micromax Q80 - Dual SIM Phone

Micromax continues to woo the entry-level mobile segment, announcing the Q80 which is a QWERTY mobile phone. The specifications of the phone look pretty decent for the price bracket that the Q80 is aimed at.


The handset can handle two SIM cards and Micromax has also loaded their own Push Mail service called ezmail. The Q80 also boasts of a Yamaha amplifier and a 1200 mAh battery with claims of 5 hours of talk time and 130 hours of standby. A closer look under the hood reveals the following:

  • 2.4-inch QVGA display with a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels
  • 3G, Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth
  • 3 megapixel camera with Face and Smile detection
  • 0.3 megapixel secondary camera
  • FM Radio
  • Memory expandable to 8GB

The Q80 can support MIDI, MP3 for audio and 3GP, MP4 for video formats. As mentioned earlier, the phone also has a QWERTY keypad and an optical trackpad for navigation. Micromax has also added a few applications like Opera Mini, Snaptu, Newshunt, Facebook, Nimbuzz and more. The Q80 is priced at Rs. 4,999 which looks quite decent for the kind of features that this handset boasts of. Stay tuned for a full-fledged review.
 

Nokia WP7 Phone In October?


You can expect the first Nokia WP7 handset, sometime during the end of this year. If new reports are to be believed, Nokia could unveil the device even a lot earlier than that. The company is holding a Nokia World event in London on October 26 and 27. This is the time when Windows Phone's Mango update, which is said to change the way WP7 performs, is scheduled to come out. Naturally, this is a good occasion to launch the new device. With the arrival of this update, all media attention will be focussed towards the platform.

Having said that, Nokia could alternatively launch the device during the end of the year (in December perhaps) as earlier reports had suggested. We think that the company would make the announcement during October about a launch date of December. As of now, the Nokia World seems like the best bet to show off the device. However, it was expected that Nokia could announce the device during the already concluded Nokia Connection event, which was held in conjunction with the Nokia CommunicAsia 2011. Everyone will be eagerly awaiting the announcement of the "market disrupting device" or the Nokia N9, so we think that it was wise of Nokia to keep the suspense alive.

Source : Nokia WP7 Phone In October?

June 23, 2011

Creative Launch Affordable Wireless Speaker

Speakers don't always have to be large, cumbersome, and boring to look at. Creative Technology Ltd seems to have taken note of this as they announced the D80 Bluetooth wireless one-piece portable speaker, which comes in four colours.

This speaker can play from any stereo Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR source compatible with A2DP/AVRCP profile such as the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phones, tablet computers, and laptops. The Bluetooth Connect button present on the speaker lets you instantly it with the source without any hassle, and you can use the same to toggle between pre-paired sources. Support for AVRCP profile means that you can control speaker volume through compatible source devices. There is also an auxiliary input to connect other audio devices. With no obstructions such as walls, the speaker can be placed at a distance of up to 10 m from the source. It has two 3" full range drivers, which claim to produce full, dynamic audio.  The D80 weighs just 1.06 kg and has dimensions 32.5x10x10 cm.

Ernest Sim, Regional Sales Manager for Indian Subcontinent at Creative said, "Most people today store their music in portable Bluetooth enabled devices like the iPhone, Android phone, Blackberry or tablet computers like the iPad or Creative ZiiO, and the Creative D80 is designed to be the perfect compact Bluetooth speaker to go with these wireless devices. The Creative D80 speaker is so compact that it can easily be carried anywhere throughout the home or almost everywhere in a backpack, and it s priced for everyone".

Available in white with a pink, blue, or green grille or black with a black grille, the Creative D80 will be available across the country by the end of July at an MRP of Rs 2,699.
  

Google Translate support five new Indian langauges

In one of its major strides towards reaching out to the local community, search engine giant Google announces its translation services for five Indian languages namely Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu. With the inclusion of new languages, the total number of languages supported by Google Translate has risen to 63. Google says these languages are presently in experimental phase, noting that Indian languages are pretty different from English language. It also highlights that the new languages supported by its online translation service are spoken by over 500 million people in India and Bangladesh.

Google's research scientist Ashish Venugopal writes at Google Blog, “Indic languages differ from English in many ways, presenting several exciting challenges when developing their respective translation systems. Indian languages often use the Subject Object Verb (SOV) ordering to form sentences, unlike English, which uses Subject Verb Object (SVO) ordering. This difference in sentence structure makes it harder to produce fluent translations; the more words that need to be reordered, the more chance there is to make mistakes when moving them”.

“Tamil, Telugu and Kannada are also highly agglutinative, meaning a single word often includes affixes that represent additional meaning, like tense or number. Fortunately, our research to improve Japanese (an SOV language) translation helped us with the word order challenge, while our work translating languages like German, Turkish and Russian provided insight into the agglutination problem,” he adds.

Mr Venugopal also points out that these new alpha languages are likely to be less fluent and may have several untranslated words as compared to languages such as Spanish and Chinese - which he says have much more of the web content that powers Google's statistical machine translation approach. He concludes his post hoping the new alpha languages will help users have better understanding of the Indic web and encourage publication of new content in Indic languages.

June 22, 2011

Firefox 5 Released

Just three months after Firefox 4’s release , one of the most major Firefox updates to date , we now have Firefox 5 , which just happens to be one of the more minor releases.

A while back, Mozilla decided to move Firefox to a new rapid release processl, where new versions of Firefox would be released much faster than before, every six weeks. This is in part due to the success of Chrome using this model, but mostly since it is the best way to get the latest developments to users.

While we do call this version a minor update, it marks a significant step for Mozilla, being the first release under their new rapid release model. This model has required quite a few adjustments for Mozilla due to the repercussions into numerous other products. Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, both of which are based on the same code as Firefox, will need to adjust as well. Thunderbird has already moved to a rapid release model as well, with a beta of Thunderbird 5 released recently, and a beta version of Seamonkey 2.2 based on Gecko 5.0 coming soon.

Firefox Mobile will also follow Firefox’s release cycle, and today also marks the release of Firefox 5 for Mobile (Android).

Another huge adjustment was required for the add-on compatibility process. Already many old Firefox extensions take quite a while to be updated when a new version of Firefox is released, but with releases every 6 weeks, this would quickly become a nightmare. Thankfully, Mozilla has created a new process by which add-ons will be passed through a compatibility scanner, which will automatically detect if an add-on is compatible with the changes made in the latest Firefox version. If an add-on is indeed still compatible, then it’s compatibility will automatically be bumped making it instantly available to uses of the latest Firefox version. Non-compatible add-ons wont automatically be bumped, however the add-on authors will be informed so they can make the requisite changes. A manual validation process is also available for add-ons not hosted on Mozilla’s site.

Another approach to tackling this problem is also in process, with the development of a new Add-on SDK for Firefox, which allows developers to create add-ons using web standard technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Add-ons created using this SDK will not have to worry about compatibility problems as new versions of Firefox are released.

Other than the release process, and the new changes to how Mozilla works with add-ons, Firefox 5 does bring a number of small new features, bug-fixes and improvements. One of the biggest new features is support for CSS3 Animations. CSS3 animations allow web developer to animate HTML elements, allowing for rich web animated web content based on open standards.There have been numerous other improvements to HTML5 support as well. A minor visual change is that the old Do-Not-Track header configuration option has now been moved to the Privacy section where it belongs and is more discoverable.

Firefox 6 and 7 are already in development, and will bring numerous new features, and the best thing is there isn’t long to wait. You can download a pre-release build of Firefox 6 already on the Aurora channel.

BlackBerry PlayBook available on Tradus.in

BlackBerry PlayBook is set to hit shelves in India later this month. Prior to its official arrival, you can now book the gadget at Tradus.in. The website provides an option of booking three versions of BlackBerry PlayBook with 16GB, 32GB and 64GB of storage capacity.

The website has listed the BlackBerry PlayBook 16GB at a price tag of Rs27,990 inclusive of all taxes and promises delivery within 5-7 working days. The 32GB and 64GB PlayBooks are available at price of Rs 32,990 and Rs 37,990 respectively. Explaining more about the PlayBook offer, Rahul Sethi- President of the e-commerce division at Tradus.in explains, “Lately, Gadgets have been ruling the consumer space and we are glad to bridge the gap between our customers & their gizmo needs, by offering this sensation from Blackberry. With over 10 tablets already pre-booked on Tradus.in, we are very confident that the demand of this tablet will only continue to rise”.

The pricing of PlayBook puts the gadget in direct competition with Apple's iPad 2 that starts at a price point of Rs 29,500. Talking about the features, PlayBook has a 3MP 1080p HD front facing camera and 5 MP 1080p HD rear-facing camera. With a 7-inch LCD display, the Playbook is expected to attract prospective buyers looking for a compact solution compared to the iPad 2. Running on a 1GHz dual-core processor, the Playbook does boast of very capable hardware specification, what is still unclear though is whether the Blackberry Tablet OS will be able to compete with the Android Honeycomb and the Apple iOS 5.

LinkedIn celebration for 10 million members in India

LinkedIn, one of the most prominent professional networking websites, has announced that its subscriber base in India has risen to 10 million. The network, which has over 100 million members, kicked off its India operations in 2009. In spite of stiff competition from other networking websites such as Orkut and Facebook, LinkedIn India's quickly gained 10 million subscribers have certainly surprised many. Also, it has successfully managed to stand face to face with the major job portals in the country.
 
LinkedIn says in its press release that it had also established a local leadership team to drive the company’s marketing solutions and corporate solutions businesses. “We have focused our efforts on creating a great user experience for our members, which helps them understand the power of their professional network in developing their own professional brand.,” says Hari V. Krishnan, country manager of LinkedIn India. “As our members here continue to use LinkedIn for everything, from networking and gaining business insights to business development & jobs, we are committed to being the exchange which connects talent to opportunity in India.”

According to LinkedIn, its India members are using interactive activities such as groups, polls and answers to “engage, collaborate and even grow business opportunities across the LinkedIn network”. The network further says several Indian brands such as Volkswagen, Jet Airways, CNN, ICICI Lombard and HopSim are using its platform to interact with the professionals.

June 21, 2011

Nokia Unveils N9 Smartphone

Nokia unveiled Tuesday its new N9 smartphone that runs the MeeGo operating system, and is being marketed as a "pure touch screen" device without buttons.The N9 will launch later this year, and the company will release later the device's pricing and availability in various markets, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said at a company event in Singapore. 

Nokia said in February that it would establish a future smartphone strategy around Microsoft's Windows Phone 7, to help the company compete against Apple's iPhone and handsets using Google's Android operating system. 

The company said it would still put out during the year a smartphone with MeeGo, a Linux-based OS developed in collaboration with Intel.The Windows-based product is scheduled to ship later this year, Elop said. Nokia had earlier said the product would ship by the fourth quarter.

Nokia also restated its commitment to the Symbian operating system at the event. The company said it will start shipping Nokia N8s, E7s, C7s and C6-01s with the new Symbian Anna software update in July. By the end of August, existing owners of these devices can also download Symbian Anna. Over the next 12 months Nokia plans to bring up to 10 new Symbian-based smartphones to market.

Nokia designed the N9 as an "all screen" phone with a 3.9 inch display that covers most of the front side of the device. No home button is built on to it. Instead, users navigate back to the home view by simply swiping across the edge of the phone's screen. 

People want more screen on their phone, and want to be able to use their phones when on the move, said Marko Ahtisaari, Nokia's senior vice president for design. That requires the phone to offer better one-handed use, and the ability to view all information at a glance of the phone, he added.

The N9 features an 8-megapixel camera. It also uses near-field communication technology. During Tuesday's demo Ahtisaari showed that the device can easily synchronize with a Bluetooth headset, simply by having the phone touch the earphones.The phone will come in three colors: black, cyan and magenta. There will be two versions available with storage at 16GB and 64GB.

First Android Honeycomb 3.2 Tablet By Huawei

Manufacturer Huawei claims the title for the first Android Honeycomb 3.2 tablet, with its 7-inch MediaPad announced on Monday.The tablet runs version 3.2 of Google's Android operating system for tablets, which is essentially the same version found on Motorola's 10-inch tablet, but tailored to the 7-inch screen of the MediaPad.

The MediaPad is expected to ship in Q3 in the U.S., but Huaweit offers no availability date or pricing. The tablet runs on a 1.2GHz processor and Huawei claims you can squeeze out six hours of battery life, which is still around four hours less than market leader, Apple's iPad. Huawei's tablet will be more in line with HTC's Flyer tablet, which runs on non-tablet optimized version of Android.

The MediaPad is lighter than an iPad, coming in at 0.86 pounds, but it's slightly thicker at 0.4 inches, versus the iPad's 0.34-inches. Huawei's tablet also features dual cameras, one 5MP lens at the rear, which can record HD video (but no mention on whether it's 720p or 1080p), and a 1.3MP sensor on the front for self-portraits and video calls.

Along with 3G (HSPA+) and Wi-Fi support, the MediaPad can play 1080p videos and offers 8GB of internal storage, as well as microSD (up to 32GB) and HDMI slots. Huawei promises Flash Player 10.3 will be on board at launch, together with preloaded Facebook, Twitter, and Documents To Go apps, and the Let's Golf game.

When the MediaPad hits the U.S. shores this fall, the tablet will be likely sold though carriers at a subsidized price (but tied to a monthly data contract), as Engadget reports Huawei has no plans to release a Wi-Fi-only model of its Honeycomb 3.2 tablet.

June 19, 2011

LG Optimus 3D

LG has grabbed attention of tech enthusiasts with its latest addition to the popular Optimus series of smartphones. The recently launched Optimus 2X can do nothing but weep at having lost its flagship status. The Optimus 3D is now the latest and greatest offering from the Korean company.  

According to the press release, the device boasts of a Tri-Dual configuration: dual-core, dual-channel, and dual-memory, that is. Of course, the most important aspect of the phone is its ability to deliver 3D stereoscopic content without the need for glasses. The display has a real-estate of 4.3", capable of 1080p output in 2D and up to 720p in 3D. The phone's software offers real-time conversion of 2D photos and videos into 3D. The phone is DLNA certified, and an HDMI port is also present. Although the press release doesn't give many details about the CPU and RAM, it is expected to be a dual-core 1 GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor, coupled with a PowerVR SGX540 GPU. The phone will also have a 3D augmented reality browser, developed in collaboration with Wikitude.

Looking at the hype surrounding 3D, this device will probably get a good response. Although the Galaxy S II from another Korean manufacturer packs in more power, the 3D gimmick may prove to be the decisive factor.The Optimus 3D will be available in Europe first, and then in more than 60 markets around the world over the next several weeks.
Source : LG Optimus 3D